Love & Pregnancy in the Time of COVID by Francie Flanagan

There are a few things they don’t prepare you properly for when talking about
pregnancy.

They don’t tell you that you may spend the first six months of your pregnancy living alone, 1100 miles (or more) away from your partner. You might find yourself at countless doctors' appointments alone, drilling the OBGYN for answers so you can tell your boyfriend every nitty, gritty detail so he’s as up to speed as he could be.

They don’t prepare you for anatomy scans alone, where you *really* get to see the baby up close.

The books don’t say you’re going be packing up your life at six and a half months pregnant to move across the country. The articles online don’t have anything preparing you for a two-day car trip.

And no one - at least that I’ve found - has a ‘how-to’ guide for surviving pregnancy and time with a newborn during a global pandemic.

As someone who had to figure all this out, I’m not here to tell you I’m an expert - but I am here to say, you can get through it.

I met my boyfriend, Kyle, in February of 2019, and was instantly smitten. We knew that we would have to tackle long-distance (he lived in Florida, and I lived in Chicago), but we were both in agreement that we wouldn’t go longer than two weeks without seeing each other.

He was the piece that had been missing from my life and the brightest soul I had ever seen. He showed me a side of life that I hadn’t been living and I was beyond ready for all adventures I could see us going on together. I was head over heels in love.

And in September, life threw us quite the curveball. After weathering Hurricane Dorian on a cruise ship for my boyfriend’s birthday, and a busy month of work, I found out that I was pregnant. Was it five extra days on the ship, or was it the both of us walking a little too close to a Mayan fertility temple on a tour of the Chacchoben ruins in Costa Maya, no one will ever know – but I for one like to think it was the latter. Plus, it’s something fun to tell our daughter when she’s older.

Being a mother was never something that I thought was in the cards for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love kids. Adore them. I always considered myself a pretty epic babysitter, I could soothe fussy babies and kids with the best of them, and I love spoiling my cousin’s kids. I just didn’t picture myself in the mother role.

Life has a funny way of taking you down a path that you don’t expect.

We probably would’ve had a child together eventually, but it kicked things into high gear. We were having to plan a move, think about work for the future, and a thousand other things, even before we hit a year of dating together.

The last thing we were expecting to have to navigate, too, was a global pandemic.

In March, Kyle came up to Chicago. We packed up my cat, and my car, and we spent two days driving to Kyle’s apartment in Florida where we would start our life as a family. No longer apart, no longer spending weeks away from each other. Sure, we would travel for work, and we would have long, busy days, but we would be together.

Then COVID hit. And we didn’t go anywhere.

In a time that was supposed to be full of joy, it was riddled with uncertainty. I was back to going to appointments alone, with my boyfriend listening in on the phone. My baby shower was cancelled. All of the newborn classes, breastfeeding courses, and hospital tours were rescheduled and eventually cancelled. What was supposed to be a joyful lead up to welcoming our little girl into the world became riddled with worry and stress.

We knew that we couldn’t have any visitors in the hospital, so it would be just the two of us. We also knew that having visitors right after we got home might be a struggle. But we also knew that we would get through it. The hospital experience was hard enough anyway. I had gone a week past my due date, and we went in for a scheduled induction at one am on the morning of June 8th.

After one dose of the induction drug they were going to use, and the babies heart rate dropping too much over the course of the night, we were presented with a choice in the morning. We opted for a c-section, but by the time we got to the surgical floor, her heart rate had dropped so low that the one nurse we had suddenly became twelve. They told us they would be moving quickly, and if they couldn’t get her heart rate up to a certain point by the time they got into
the surgical suite, I would be put fully under anaesthesia and Kyle wouldn’t be able to come in.

Thankfully, it rose, and by the time Kyle was let into the surgical suite, the surgeon had already started and the baby was out in two minutes. 7 lbs, 2 oz of pure calm beauty. She hardly cried.

Fast forward to two months post-partum. Our daughter is happy, healthy and thriving. We are working through the wildness of the new world as best we can, and we are happy, healthy and safe.

It’s not without struggles, though. C-section recovery is not a walk in the park. Even eight weeks later, cleared for resuming normal duties, I still have pain. Not having human interaction during the day when you’re home with a new baby is hard, especially when you didn’t have a chance to make any other new friends at your pre-natal classes, or through mutual acquaintances. My boyfriend works, so I long for the evening hours and the weekend when he’s home and we can spend time together. Having to wrestle with the decision of switching
from exclusively breastfeeding to formula feeding and not feeling like I had failed was hard on its own.

In a time when I’m struggling with hormones rebalancing and learning how to take care of myself, a new baby, and giving my relationship all of the love and attention that it deserves, not being able to go out and meet a girlfriend for coffee or walk the aisles of a store to pass some time is hard. It’s lonely, and I second guess a lot. I get far too excited for a car ride and do a little dance every time my boyfriend suggests we go get ice cream or something like that. But
at the end of the day, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I’m home. Yes, it’s tough, and life has so much uncertainty these days. But I love waking up with the love of my life on one side, our gorgeous baby on the other, and a clear head.

All that I can do is remind myself that these conditions aren’t forever. Loneliness isn’t permanent. We’ll one day throw a raging party in our backyard. And, we’ll get dressed up and go out for a wonderful dinner (just the two of us). Until then, I take time each day to move my body with some sort of gentle movement, we cook good food, we tackle projects – from landscaping to RC cars and boats, to decorating the nursery.

And at the end of the day, I know things will be ok because we’re together. When I told Kyle that I was pregnant, he hugged me and gave me a kiss. With certainty, he looked me in the eye and said, “We’ll get through this together, no matter what.”

So, even on the tough days, I remember him saying that. He is the best boyfriend, an amazing father, and when we look back on these crazy days – pandemic, newborn, new house – we will know we got through with hard work, with love and with each other.

Here’s the thing: it’s hard work moving to a new city. It’s hard work having a baby. It’s hard work just doing those things, but it gets multiplied when you have to do it in the middle of a pandemic. So just hold on to your good things – whatever they may be – and know you have brighter days ahead.

Francie is a new momma of a beaming bundle of energy and joy named Samantha. She and her boyfriend Kyle live in the Greater Orlando Area in Florida along with their dog, Apollo, and their lizard chasing cat, Brutus. You can follow her @Spaghetti.In.Space on Instagram, where she’s just getting her act back together and talks about joyful movement, tasty food, and now – motherhood.