New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
New mom stays positive, even giving birth during pandemic
FAIRFIELD — Despite giving birth during the coronavirus pandemic, new mom Nora Goddard faced the experience with optimism and good cheer.
And in the two months since her son was born, she’s found the silver lining in what could have been a time of fear and panic.
Goddard, who gave birth to her son Elias on April 12, said the coronavirus pandemic first started to come onto her radar in February. A school counselor at New Canaan Country School — she is scheduled to start at Fairfield Country Day School in the fall — she said she needed to be aware of what was going on in order to put student’s fears into perspective.
“I think, for the most part, I always felt really safe,” Goddard said. “I always felt really fortunate that, as things started to really ramp up, at least in this area, my school went on spring break and then went remote. The last month of my pregnancy, I was at home.”
Goddard said she and her husband, David Cole, stayed home almost the entire time, with family members bringing them groceries and other things they needed. She said she followed medical recommendations for pregnant women.
“It was showing, then at least, that pregnant women do need to be careful, but it didn’t seem like they were at more of a risk than anybody else,” she said.
Regulations at her OB-GYN changed, Goddard said, and her husband was no longer allowed to go to appointments with her. She said she had to call from the car when she arrived and wore a mask when she was inside.
“I was at the point in my pregnancy where I was still able to go into the office,” Goddard said. “Whereas, I know that they were doing a lot more telehealth visits for women who were earlier in their pregnancy.”
Goddard said she took the process moment-by-moment and, because Elias is her first child, she does not have anything to compare it with. She said the most stressful part of the pregnancy was ambiguity around whether her husband would be allowed in the delivery room.
“So, I felt like I was safe,” she said.
“My daily stress really wasn’t raised that much. It was more about what the delivery process would be like. Am I going to have to do this by myself? Because I heard that, in New York, they had been doing that. And that, to me, felt really scary.”
Goddard delivered her baby at Bridgeport Hospital.
“We got to the hospital at 2:30 in the morning,” Goddard said. “Which, actually, ended up being great, because we didn’t see any other patients from the time that we checked into the emergency room to when we got up into the triage area.”
Her husband was able to come with her, she said, and the couple wore masks and got their temperatures taken. When she got to the delivery area, she was tested for COVID-19 — it came back negative.
“There was our main nurse, our doctor and one other nurse that came in sort of at the end for the baby,” Goddard said. Elias was born at 9:45 a.m.
While having a baby during a pandemic is never ideal, Goddard said there have been upsides. For one thing, the pandemic has taken backseat parenting out of the equation.
“We felt like the silver lining was that we got to spend a lot of time with our baby,” she said. “We get to focus on being parents — how we want to do that.”
She also has had the advantage of having her husband with her since he’s been working from home. He is a software engineer for Wistia, a video hosting company based in Cambridge, Mass.
The hardest part now, she said, is that her parents and other family and friends have not been able to meet Elias.
“It’s just wanting to see my family, wanting to have a little bit of a break and have someone else hold him so I can take a nap,” she said.
Even when her husband’s parents came to visit, Goddard said, they had to stand 10 feet away and could not hold the baby. The new mom said she and her husband are keeping track of medical guidelines to see when they can expand their bubble and let more people meet the baby.
“We haven’t really come to any conclusions, to be honest, but we are starting the conversation,” she said. “There’s also a very emotional component to it. You want to be safe but, also, want Eli to meet his grandparents and see family and to have that emotional and physical support.”