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Consider This from NPR

Pregnant In A Pandemic: 'COVID Couldn't Rob Us Of Everything'

Consider This from NPR

NPR

News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Daily News

4.26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Three women come together to talk about the isolation and sacrifice that comes with being pregnant during the pandemic.

Those women: Irène Mathieu, a pediatrician in Charlottesville, Virginia; Elizabeth Baron, a mental health counselor in New York City; and Ashley Falcon, a fashion stylist who moved from Florida to New York in the early stages of the pandemic.

Economist Hannes Schwandt predicts the pandemic will coincide with a drop in birth rates.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This will sound dark, but there was this moment last year when things were feeling pretty

0:05.4

crazy, with the politics, the pandemic, the economy, and I wondered why would anyone bring

0:12.0

a child into this?

0:14.5

It's 6.30 in the morning on March 17th, 2020.

0:22.7

My baby is to April 2nd.

0:26.2

That anyone was about to be me.

0:28.2

I was just lying here with my eyes open.

0:30.8

I was 9 months pregnant and watching TV, watching government officials like Dr. Anthony

0:36.3

Fauci on the news.

0:38.4

People need to understand that things will get worse before they get better.

0:43.1

That wasn't helping.

0:44.7

And by the time I went into labor a few days later, it's 10.20 am and I'm an early labor.

0:53.6

And finally went to the hospital, it was like there was a new layer of uncertainty over

0:59.1

everything.

1:00.1

Okay, so just so I'm clear, in the 2-3 hours that we've been waiting, they have changed

1:09.8

the policy, different labor and delivery to only the parents, only no support person or

1:16.2

visitors, and for the NICU only one person.

1:21.0

I believe so, yeah.

1:24.6

And they had a COVID simulation slash drill.

1:29.4

Yes.

1:30.4

That's not even since this morning, that's like in the last 3 hours.

1:36.6

I'd seen a small team of medical workers practice running a resident in on a stretcher, trying

...

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