Becoming a Parent During the Pandemic Was the Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done

Becoming a Parent During the Pandemic Was the Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done

This completely different person I’ve become since I gave birth is someone virtually(ˈvərCH(o͞o)əlē) no one knows.

By Sophie Gilbert

In early March last year, I was heading home from a work happy hour on the subway when I realized that a woman was staring at my belly(ˈbelē). She looked at my waist(wāst), where my coat was belted(ˈbeltəd), and then at the floor, and then at my waist again, and then she very tentatively(ˈten(t)ədivlē) offered me her seat. I was four months pregnant(ˈpreɡnənt). (I’d also eaten a lot of fried(frīd) food at happy hour, in lieu(lo͞o) of drinking.) I felt pitifully(ˈpidēf(ə)lē) grateful to this woman at the time, and I ended up thinking about her a lot in the following months. She was really the only person—apart from my husband, my obstetrician(ˌäbstəˈtriSHən), some nurses, and my doormen—who ever saw me pregnant. My mother didn’t. My siblings(ˈsibliNG) didn’t. My best friends didn’t either, or my co-workers, or any other kindhearted strangers on the subway. After the second week of March, I stopped going anywhere apart from occasional doctor visits and walks around the city. In July, I gave birth to twins, and then I stopped going anywhere at all. “You take those babies home and you keep them there,” the head nurse at Weill(vīl, wīl) Cornell Medicine told me, and that is exactly what I did.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/03/isolation-becoming-new-parent-during-pandemic/618244/