PIONEER | SEEMA
TOUGHING IT OUT How some mothers who also worked in healthcare navigate an ongoing pandemic HEENA KAUSAR
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ashmi Prakash, a resident doctor, found out last July that she was pregnant. Prakash’s first pregnancy, it was marked by excitement, but also some concern. “There was a lot of fear about bringing a baby into a world where a pandemic is going on,” she says. Being a mother and a frontline healthcare worker during a global pandemic is a challenge many women have now faced. With Mother’s Day around the corner, SEEMA spoke to
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them, including Prakash, to learn about how they negotiated this difficult but rewarding phase. Prakash, who went to medical school at the American University of Antigua, is in the third year of a family medicine residency at Humboldt Park Health in Chicago. She says she has been extremely careful, always wearing two masks over her personal protective gear. As her pregnancy advanced, even simple things like climbing the stairs became difficult. “Trying to climb stairs with the mask on
