COMMUNITY MAGAZINE April 2021

NISSAN - IYAR 5781 / APRIL 2021 27 Lenox Hill, the hospital where I gave birth, was eerily silent on the day my daughter was born – March 18, 2020. No hallway hustle and bustle could be heard outside the delivery room door. It was truly the strangest experience. In fact, if I had to pinpoint the strangest part of giving birth during a pandemic, I’d say it was the quiet city hospital. It smelled of sanitizer, and when I had to use the restroom, I wasn’t sure if I’d be allowed to leave my room. At that point, the pandemic was very new. They had no COVID tests for us, and masks weren’t yet required. The baby nursery was still open. Lots of precautions that were put in place for the pandemic hadn’t kicked in yet. One thing that was enforced was that only my husband could come to the delivery, and no one could visit during recovery. It was very isolating, but at the same time, I was wary of being around people because of this fast-spreading virus. I shared a room with another couple, and I remember feeling too close. Uncomfortably close. Conflicting feelings, I suppose. I just wanted my family around me, and I wasn’t able to have it that way. My husband named our daughter himself in our home, with our family and friends joining us virtually on Zoom. What I took away from this experience is to just be happy for what I have. I spent so much quality time with her. Our bond was so tight because I couldn’t hand her off to anyone else; it was just us. In the end I saw it as something positive.  Celia Safdie I gave birth to my fourth child in Monmouth Medical Center on April 13, 2020. I was expecting to deliver at Lenox Hill in Manhattan, but due to the virus, I did the unheard of – I switched doctors in my final trimester. The goal was to avoid the horror stories I was hearing about the city hospitals during the pandemic. I feel it was the right decision, and Monmouth ended up being quite calm. My husband was allowed to join me for the birth and recovery, but once he left, he wasn’t allowed back. When we arrived at the hospital there was a tent outside, and we were asked to go into the tent to get our temperatures checked and to be questioned about whether we’d been exposed to the virus. No COVID tests were given because of the shortage at the time.  We got inside the hospital, and it was such an unusual experience. It was quiet, almost tranquil. Things were clearly not normal. I had to wear a mask during the entire ordeal, even during labor and birth, in which one is asked to take deep breaths. It made it even more challenging, but not as hard or scary as one might think.  Recovery was really something different. There was no nursery for the baby, so she was with me the entire time. No visitors, no nurses checking in, no one waking me up to check my vitals or take my blood. They just left me alone. I imagined how scary it would be if this was the drill when I had my first kid. Also how potentially dangerous it was. If, Gd forbid, something was wrong with a mother or a baby, no doctors would have known, because they really did not check. Of course, this also meant that they didn’t offer nursing classes or check if the baby was latching properly, which is really important for new moms. You got the vibe that they all feared their patients. What a strange time to be in a hospital. When we took the baby home, we named her – just me and my husband. I was in my pajamas. I honestly thought this made a lot of sense, a lot more sense than business as usual. Had it been a normal year, and I had a boy, it would have been a whole expensive ordeal. I don’t see the point in throwing out thousands of dollars every time a couple has a boy. And besides for the money, a new mom just had major surgery, has a highly dependent newborn, and is then expected to plan an elaborate event in eight days. It’s just so hard and can feel really unfair. This was a relief, a huge thing off my chest. No big social gathering, no pressure.  Margaret H. Mizrahi "In fact, if I had to pinpoint the strangest part of giving birth during a pandemic, I’d say it was the quiet city hospital."