‘No perfect time to have a kid’: Pregnancy during the coronavirus

Expectant mother, Evey Wilson, is learning a big lesson as she gets closer to her due date at the end of April. “There’s just never like the perfect time to have a kid,” she said.

This is the Mercer University professor’s first pregnancy. With hospitals putting restrictions in place, Wilson is worried about the possibility of having to deliver her first child alone.

“I would really like to have my husband in the room, mainly as just an advocate for me, because I know I’m going to be exhausted and tired,” said Wilson.

Wilson is scheduled to deliver at Navicent Health. So far, their policy is that moms can have at least one person in the room. Dr. Padmashree “Champa” Chaudhury Woodham, the director of maternal fetal medicine at the Medical Center, Navicent Health, does not expect the policy to change.

“I’ve been telling all my moms to just prepare for the worst case scenario and we would only be doing this for safety. You know, reasons for mom and baby,” Woodham said. “In the best case scenario, they still continue to have that one support. So if they’re mentally prepared for that, they can only be happy if we still are able to hopefully allow that.”

Moms are also concerned about getting COVID-19 and passing it on to their baby. According to the CDC, there is no known evidence that pregnant women are at an increased risk of getting coronavirus.

Woodham said, “Moms when they’re pregnant have a different type of immune systems so they are more susceptible to certain types of infections like the flu, for example. But this particular family of viruses is not one that we have seen pregnant mothers have an uptick in having.”

Despite this, pregnant women are considered at risk and advised to take the same precautions as the general public. That includes social distancing, something challenging to do when you also have doctor appointments.

Wilson said in recent weeks her doctor’s office, packed with people in the waiting room, felt like the riskiest place to be.

“People were sitting pretty close to each other, somebody would sneeze and then they would touch a magazine and then they would put the magazine back. I just felt like I was seeing this virus spread,” she said.

After that experience, her doctor offered her a virtual appointment. At her next in-person visit, she was able to wait in the car until the doctor was ready to see her.

Doctors might have to cancel or reschedule appointments but it is not cause for alarm.

Woodham said, “That’s something that we’re doing to try to consolidate visits so that they don’t have to drive to the doctor’s office that often because I know that they’re very anxious about going out in the community. And so it’s your doctor’s call. They’re trying to just cut down the number of visits to just those that are the most significant ones.”

Despite the timing of her pregnancy, Wilson is staying positive.

She said, “I’m trying to feel confident and good about – at least on maternity leave you’re usually staying to yourself so hopefully I’ll have maternity leave after this and we’ll be healthy and we’ll keep self-isolating, staying to ourselves, which was a little bit of the plan already so hopefully by the fall, we’ll be able to come out into a very normal world.”

For the latest on Navicent’s visitation policy for all patients, including mothers, check out their Family Birth Center website.

For the latest on the health system’s COVID-19 response, click here.

*Dr. Woodham is not Evey Wilson’s doctor.

This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 7:00 AM.