On April 5, 2020, our family welcomed our precious Remington Palmer, who weighed 6lbs 2oz and is absolute perfection. She is adored by her older sister Isla, and we are so happy to all be home and healthy. Remi ended up being born via a scheduled C-section for a few reasons. The main one is that I previously had an emergency C-section with Isla, and since I hadn’t started showing any signs of going into labor by 39 weeks, we decided to play it safe with another C-section. On top of that, we weren’t sure how our hospital’s restrictions were going to look even another week out with positive cases of coronavirus being on the rise. We are so thankful that even though we weren’t able to have any visitors, my husband was able to be there the whole time.

Besides the surgery going smoothly, everything else about our experience just seemed strange. Anyone who came into our room wore a mask (thankfully we didn’t have to wear a mask in our room), and if we wanted to leave our room, we had to put a mask on. The hallway lights always seemed dim since there weren’t people walking around requiring it to be well lit. At one point, Remi was the only baby on our floor. It felt lonely not having our family and friends come and love on us and our new baby. In fact, 2.5 weeks after she’s been born, our families still haven’t held her. We’ve been trying to take this quarantine seriously, but at some point we also want our parents and siblings to hold her.

Sometimes we get visitors that come to see her through the glass in our front door, but it’s not the same as when people can come sit on our couch and visit for a while. We just miss the community feel of having everyone come around us when a baby is born. There is so much to be thankful for though. This isn’t me just complaining—I really am overall just trying to explain how our experience has been because of everything going on. I look so forward to being on the other side of this quarantine. Because my husband has been working from home, it’s also allowed for a sort of extended paternal leave for him as he’s been able to help out more than if he had to go back to work.

I hope that others who have given birth during this pandemic have still had pleasant experiences despite the many restrictions they may face. What matters is that the babies are safe and healthy. We will get through this together!