Back then, I’d self-righteously thought I would never put a picture of my baby on social media. I’d even told our parents about this ban; I said I didn’t want to disseminate his image without his consent, and—perhaps more to the point—was privately haunted by vague images of slack-jawed newborns posed in pea pods, lolling around sign boards bearing their ages, bedecked with cutesy hashtags.
Then the virus came to New York—and, as if it needs saying, everything changed. All at once, all those worries and vague anxieties—about my identity, and the big strollers, and the fancy bassinet we couldn’t afford, and how to deal with my mom’s opinions about sleep training—receded like so many nonessential personnel. “Feelings,” the governor said in one of his daily briefings, “are a luxury we cannot afford.”
There were enough real things to think about, and come to terms with, and an ever-shifting set of data. Our families wouldn’t be allowed at the hospital, we were told early on; well, that would have its compensations—it would just be the three of us. A few days later we realized that, being older and vulnerable, they shouldn’t travel to New York City at all—something that would have been unthinkable a month earlier. Well, okay, we’d get them on Zoom and Skype. There’d be no one to help us out at home? We’d learn fast, and after all, it wasn’t the worst time to be sequestered. Would my husband be allowed in the hospital? Yes, we were told—then no. Well, I rationalized, it’s how all our grandmothers had done it. When we realized the baby’s basket wouldn’t be arriving in time, we fit up a drawer with a folded blanket. No stroller? Well, we had nowhere to go anyway. “We’ll figure it out,” became our household mantra. For the first time, I felt—instead of just knowing—how truly lucky I was.
This sense only grew in the ensuing days, as my baby’s birthday drew closer and the situation around us worsened, no longer a distant hypothetical or a social whirl of remote dance parties and bean-cooking tutorials, but fatalities, grim projections, and tangible fear and anger on the street. Three days before my induction date, the governor signed an executive order forcing hospitals to allow a birth partner in labor. My husband and I were relieved, but increasingly, in the face of the intolerable burden placed on hospitals, our individual wishes felt less and less important. I asked the doctor if he should stay home but was told no; because there were not enough tests available to screen partners, and inadequate protective gear, he’d just have to remain in the room.