How Covid Impacted New Moms and Newborns
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Source: Wix Images Source: Shutterstock Images Source: Shutterstock Images
COVID represented an enormous challenge for pregnant women and new moms. The fears and anxiety about contracting COVID, the unknowns of the vaccine, and the social isolation amplified the stress of being pregnant and having a newborn. Yvonne Chen, a marketing executive at Udemy who delivered her baby in August 2020, summed up the experience of being pregnant during COVID, “Covid made pregnancy very difficult and took some of the joy away. Part of the joy is sharing your pregnancy and your newborn with people and we were extremely cautious during pregnancy. We pretty much didn’t see anyone - even my baby shower was virtual.”
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Pregnant Women's Vaccine Concerns
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However, a wealth of confusion and misinformation about the safety of vaccines for pregnant/new moms led to a high degree of vaccine hesitancy. Part of the problem was that the clinical trials for the vaccine had not included pregnant women because they are a protected population in all vaccine trials, so there was no clear safety and efficacy data available to pregnant women to help them make their decision. In fact, a lack of information was the leading reason why pregnant women did not get vaccinated. Others were misinformed about whether the vaccine was even available to pregnant women. As Amie Reaux, the mother of a pregnant woman who died from COVID explained, we were “just scared...and we didn’t think they were offering it to pregnant women.” (“Grieving Family Warns of COVID’s Awful Toll During Pregnancy,” 2020).
Torri Metz, MD, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah commented, “we just had no data in pregnancy… so it was hard for patients, and, you know, health care practitioners to feel 100% comfortable getting the vaccine in pregnancy” (“Grieving Family Warns of COVID’s Awful Toll During Pregnancy,” 2020). Even women who were pro-science and were willing to take the flu vaccine were hesitant about taking the COVID vaccine while pregnant. Pregnant women were very afraid of what the vaccine might do to their pregnancy and their unborn child. Fears about miscarriage and the detrimental health effects on unborn children proliferated.
The decision to get vaccinated became not just a medical decision, but a parenting decision, since pregnant women and their partners felt they were making a critical decision on behalf of their unborn child, who had no say in the matter. This was daunting given all the unknowns. Women were plagued by “what ifs” - what if the vaccine did harm to their child? What if it turned out to be a bad decision? Pregnant women emotionally weighed the unknown risks of the vaccine more than they weighed the known risks of getting COVID. Consequently, as of October 2021, 75% percent of pregnant women had not received the vaccine.
Yet the dangers to pregnant women of contracting COVID are extremely high. In fact, as of October of 2021, over 200 pregnant women had died of COVID-19 and 23,000 had been hospitalized. According to the Center of Disease Control, the health risks of contracting COVID for pregnant mothers include having a more severe case of COVID-19, being hospitalized, and needing to be placed on a ventilator, as well as other adverse pregnancy outcomes.
There are also risks of contracting COVID on the unborn child. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, there are many links between contracting COVID during pregnancy and preterm birth and admission into the neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU). As Yvonne Chen explained, “I was very worried about contracting COVID because there wasn’t a lot of research done yet about how it affects pregnant women or how it affects the developing fetus in the womb.”
The Mental Health Toll
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The fear of getting the vaccine, fears of contracting COVID, and the impact of COVID restrictions on pregnant women took a serious toll on the mental health of new moms during the pandemic. Jessie Austrian, a producer in New York City who delivered her second baby in March 2020 right at the beginning of the pandemic described how she feared for her newborn’s safety due to not being eligible for the vaccine: “I was “terrified that Tabitha would contract COVID - I didn’t take her anywhere… I didn’t take Tabitha to the grocery store for a year.” When she learned that her newborn daughter needed surgery relating to a tongue-tie issue, Jessie “had to make an agonizing decision” regarding whether she should go through with the surgery and subject her 8-day old daughter to infected hospitals during the beginning of the pandemic.
Yvonne Chen echoed Jessie’s concerns, “Even after the vaccine, we were still reading about how vaccinated people could spread the virus to unvaccinated people and our baby was unvaccinated. Even though the data says serious cases of COVID are rare in children, we were most worried about ‘Long Covid.’ Our baby is not protected in any shape or form. What if he gets Long-Covid and suffers serious long-term neurological issues.”
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New Mother Spotlight: Leryn Messori Recounts Covid's Impact During Second Pregnancy
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Leryn Messori, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the Bay Area who had a baby during the pandemic commented on how drastically different her two pregnancies were before and during the pandemic, and how the Covid restrictions significantly impacted her mental health. She noted that “when I was pregnant with my first child, I was able to do prenatal yoga -- it was nice to bond with other women who were pregnant and develop those relationships and do self-care.” However, with her second child, she mentioned that she felt “really limited in [her] contact because of how severe the risk was… [she] didn’t go out, didn’t go to the grocery store, and didn’t leave the house essentially” highlighting how restrictive pregnant women had to abide by these guidelines.
Leryn’s lack of contact during her pregnancy also extended to not being able to see her parents during the entire pregnancy “which was really difficult and really different,” leading to more feelings of loneliness and isolation as her pregnancy progressed. Relating to the topic of loneliness, she mentioned that “for [her] ultrasounds, [her] husband wasn’t allowed to come with [her]... so [she] had to hear the heartbeat for the first time by [herself] wasn’t able to hear the heartbeat for the first time” adding to the mentally taxing and draining process.
Studies Show the Impact of Covid's Mental Health Toll
A study from Stanford University found that the pandemic nearly doubled the rate of depression among pregnant women. Additionally, a second Stanford study that examined the mental health of over 700 pregnant women during the pandemic found that almost 40% of the participants scored high in terms of depressive symptoms.
Another study out of the University of Southern California by Alyssa Morris and Darby Saxby explored the effects of reduced social interactions on pregnant women during the pandemic.
Results showed that 61% of pregnant women reported “somewhat” or “very” negative effects on their social relationships, and the majority of women agreed that the pandemic had limited the amount of contact they had with neighbors, friends, and the community. Furthermore, half of the women in the study reported symptoms of depression, and 62% reported significant anxiety symptoms - twice the pre-pandemic rate.
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Source: Shutterstock Images
How Covid Has Impacted Infant Social Development
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Yvonne Chen explained how COVID continues to impact them even though their son is now one-year old, but he still cannot get the vaccine, “We can’t just do normal things. We have to think about everything - oh the party is indoors? We definitely can’t go. Oh the party is with a bunch of people without kids” We can’t go. There are still a lot of limitations. Our son has never been to a grocery store because we don’t take him anywhere indoors. He’s never ridden in a grocery cart or walked down the aisles with me - that’s kind of depressing.”
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Sadly, fear and anxiety have negative physical consequences on pregnant women and new moms, creating a vicious cycle that ties mental health to physical health. It is a shame that pregnant women and new moms suffered so greatly during the pandemic with few places to turn for support. Pregnancy is a stressful time to begin with and the pandemic just made it all the more stressful for this vulnerable population. We will have to wait to see the long term impact of how the pandemic impacted this cohort, but we should not be surprised for additional mental health issues to surface down the road for this group.
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