Restricted Delivery The birth story of Natasha Elliot Tell us a bit about your experience of pregnancy during lockdown: I went on maternity leave when I was 37 weeks pregnant. A week later the world went into lockdown, I felt a lot of pressure to keep myself and the baby so didn’t leave the house. My Husband, Simeon would do the food shopping and I felt like he was going out to war, I was worried he would bring the virus home. We would go for daily walks around our village but even that filled me with dread. I started mourning my maternity leave, I didn’t get to meet friends and family for lunches or do any last minute shopping before the baby arrived. I had too much time to think and worry, I would have really emotional days thinking about how our families wouldn’t get to meet the baby, would they love him? Would they bond with him? It really broke my heart. I had to limit the amount of news I was watching and how much time I was spending on social media because that fed into my anxiety. I just really missed out on normality!!!
Many support systems were stripped away during lockdown in 2020. How did you find this and what impact did it have on your wellbeing and journey as a whole? In a weird way I was lucky because I was at the end of my pregnancy when we went into lockdown so I only had a few appointments to attend. My midwife appointments were
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all at the local children’s centre and I had to go in alone, have my temperature taken and of course use hand gel. I was just nervous about if any contact with the midwifes was safe but the baby’s safety and wellbeing was my priority.
As a new first time mum, do you feel that lockdown contributed to your worries about pregnancy, birth and motherhood? And if so how and why? Yes, I would worry about going into hospital. How many people were the midwifes and doctors mixing with, this is going to put me and my baby at risk. What would I do if I got covid and was alone in hospital. All mums worry, especially first time mums, but with covid this definitely heightened my anxiety about Hudson’s health. I had separation anxiety, it took along time to feel relaxed leaving Hudson. I still hate it now and have wobbles leaving him!!
Do you feel that your experience of giving birth during lockdown was impacted? If so, what was the emotional impact of this on both you and your birth partner? The emotional impact was huge, having a baby is one of the biggest life changes anyone can go through and we did it in the middle of a global pandemic. I was overdue and the midwife was worried about the baby’s growth, so I was taken into hospital
