To all the brave and courageous mamas currently expecting a baby, have delivered, or are going through postpartum during COVID19:

I have been thinking of you.

I cannot imagine what this must be like for you.  Pregnancy during normal conditions is hard enough.  The list of things you cannot touch, cannot ingest, cannot go near, cannot breathe, cannot experience seems unending.  Everyday, you are experiencing tidal-wave-proportions of fatigue, emotional duress, and responsibilities.  All of which you cannot control.  But having to go through all of this during a pandemic is to be in a constant state of unease and anxiety.

For those of you who have delivered and are going through postpartum, my heart aches for you as well.  Labor, postpartum healing, and caring for a newborn is traumatic enough without also having to add the stress of isolation and quarantine, and fear for yours and your baby’s health and well being.  

What was once meant to be a joyful, celebratory, and exciting experience has now become tenuous, dreadful, and disquieting.

Mama, I want you to know something. . .

If you are currently pregnant, have, or will deliver your baby during this COVID19 global pandemic, It’s okay to grieve your pregnancy and birth experience with your baby. 

Give yourself permission to mourn the experience that you had imagined and dreamed of. 

It does not mean that you are a bad mother or that you are ungrateful or that you love your baby any less. 

This. Is. Hard. 

Maybe you are going to be a first time mom and you had imagined what it would be like since you were a little girl, or maybe you are having your second, and your fears of this experience being “less special” are materializing, or maybe you were desperately trying to conceive and now having to wait, or maybe you always wanted to hold your partner’s hand when you both met your child for the first time, or maybe you had always envisioned the exact moment that you would introduce your family to the baby and it wasn’t through Zoom.

Whatever it was that you had dreamed of for so long … It’s okay to grieve that loss, because it is a loss, and I’m mourning with you. 

If you are currently experiencing this, I wonder if you would share what the hardest part has been for you? 

And if you are not currently experiencing this, but know of someone who might be, tag a friend who needs to hear this, and who needs to know, that they are not alone.

Because now, more than ever, we need each other.