Birth and Healing in a Pandemic Pregnancy, Part 1: The Double Line
By: Noelle Via Borda
Tags: Motherhood, Birth, Covid 19, Pregnancy, Baby

Part 1: The Double Line

Image By JustLife, Licensed from Adobe Stock

The quickening is a term many use to describe a fluttering sensation in the belly women sometimes feel at early stages of pregnancy. With my first baby, I felt that odd little feeling in the first month of my pregnancy even before I knew I had a baby on the way. It was a little strange, but also a little magical. So there I was, on a flight home to California from New York as my company kicked off a new office construction project, and I felt that same magical and strange sensation, like a butterfly playing in my stomach.

I thought about what I should do next. I would be happy to be pregnant because my husband and I wanted to add another little brother or sister for our son. But I had a big business trip planned in a couple of weeks to do a Europe tour that I had been looking forward to all year. I loved work, and I was on a roll. The timing wasn’t great. I really wanted to eat stinky cheese and drink French wine after a long day of site visits and contractor meetings. I figured if I just waited until after it was over, I’d be able to emotionally tackle this major life change when I got back. I could make some excuse to declining wine at dinner to my colleagues. As I let my mind wander on the plane during the cross-coastal flight, the couple next to me offered me some cleaning wipes. “You know, that virus that’s in the news in China,” they said. I shook my head “no,” thinking they were being paranoid. And then I thought again and took them up on their generosity.

A couple weeks passed. We threw a birthday party for our son, who just turned three years old. It was a perfect little train-themed party in our local park with all his friends. California is one of the only places you can have an outdoor party in February. It was perfect, and life was good. As my trip neared, I packed my bag to leave for Paris. I was excited, but also increasingly nervous as I folded clothes. The COVID-19 virus that was buzzing in the news in China had just hit Italy hard and was causing a wave of hospitalizations and deaths. I thought more and more about that flutter I had felt in my stomach. As much as I wanted to compartmentalize the possibility of being pregnant until I came home, I had a strong feeling that I was very likely pregnant, and traveling might be very dangerous. My inner mama bear made an appearance and was sending me intuition signals to stay home.

And so, on a Friday before I was to leave, I told my team I was canceling my trip. I worried that as a woman, I’d be filling that stereotypical role of being the worrier. All the men on the team decided not to cancel, after all. But there was no shaking my intuition. I just knew I needed to stay home. So I unpacked my bags, sent the emails around that I needed to send. And by Monday, my company, the entire Bay Area where I lived, and the country, were completely shutting down as the virus spread quickly on a global scale. By Monday, my fellow colleagues were asking me for lottery numbers for predicting that the virus would become so dire so quickly as we all quickly transitioned to working from home.

I took my pregnancy test, knowing that I already knew what it would say. That beautiful and now terrifying double line indeed made its appearance. I was pregnant at the beginning of the most unprecedented event of my lifetime, a global pandemic that would go on to kill thousands of people and change the fabric of global society.

Oh shit …