This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)
Reading Time: 4 minutesLiving during coronavorus time sounds like a big rip off which drags you between hope and distress.
It is proven: an expectant mom doesn’t transmit the virus to the fetus because it does not pass through the placenta. One positive news into a sea of uncertainties and fears, suspicions and searches backwards into the mind to understand who did you meet, what place you visited or touched.
Before covid-19 in our area meningitis had spread, just next to the town that we left two months before moving to Bergamo. I wondered «Should I take the appropriate preventive measures, as buying a surgical mask, to attend the airport?».
Coronavirus during the pregnancy: the first cases in Lombardy
After meningitis alarm retracted, news from China spread like wildfire, and like wildfire, the virus infection spread too. Korea, Russia, Europe, the first cases in Italy. In meanwhile Francesco and I had two flights that we had booked for a long time to go to Calabria and stay a few days at the beginning of February.
Coronavirus during pregnancy: school, the first interruptions
Everything gave me the impression that the virus, like meningitis, was pursuing us without reaching us because the day before going back to Bergamo the government closed schools for a week, and Francesco is a teacher. I thought «It’s ok, we can delay the departure for a week, it will be as a vacation».
I got ready to change the date of the gynaecological examination I should have done on the 9th of March at Papa Giovanni hospital. I soon booked a new examination in Calabria to finally meet my girl on ultrasound after 40 days.
Coronavirus during pregnancy: the second delay of school opening
Honestly, my only worry was that all the stuff for the birth and my baby’s clothes were in Bergamo. But, as the deadline for my pregnancy was the 9th of May, I was convinced that I still could go back there on time.
But this wasn’t the story, Lombardy president kept schools closed for one more week. TV talked about a “red zone”, about the contagion cases in Bergamo, right in the hospital where I had to give birth. Now it was talked as “a dangerous place in the middle of the emergency”. I saw my hope to return more and more distant.
Giving birth in the RED ZONE
The priority wasn’t the city where to give birth, but this hospital was so close to home, only 9 minutes by car and this awareness made me feel safe. Moreover, I couldn’t go anymore to the pre-birth course, a series of meetings on which I staked everything to live peacefully my birth contractions.
«Take the hit, take it all until you can, defuse, play for time, you have your family beside you, in Bergamo you’re alone! And then, there’s the sea! Moreover, the 2nd of March Marta was born, my second nephew, a puppy who delayed 10 days». My mind used to bounce among these inputs to survive to unexpected news. At that point, everything could be unexpected and changeable.
Coronavirus during pregnancy: the final closure of Italy
Meantime I caught a cold, exasperated by the mild cure I adopted, I didn’t want to take many medicines as I was pregnant. You can imagine my mood that day: headache, swollen throat, no chance to return in Bergamo at least until September and bad weather out of the window.
We were planning to go at least to Rome, to Francesco’s sister, she should have lent us very useful things for the baby and to my last pregnant times. Did I mention that we were in Calabria only with two backpacks and two jumpers?
Time after time, TV gave us the feeling that we had to anticipate the departure to Rome. But right while we were planning it, the extraordinary edition of the news announced the stoppage of the whole nation, it was all defined as red zone until the 3rd of April. Deathblow. Our daughter had to born without a house, without clothes, without a baby carriage.
Coronavirus victims without infection
As you can see, our experience testifies that this f***ing virus is claiming victims also in a latent way. It brings the economy to its knees, it stops working plans and life plans. It decides where your daughter will have to be born, how many baby onesie she will dirty and how many she will leave clean.
The only and simple answer we can give, in the light of the unpredictable facts, is that no one can control life, we have to be flexible to avoid desperation. Probably it was written, maybe in Chinese characters, that our girl had to born in Southern Italy and with the strictly necessary.
Girl,
I wish you to remain determined as when you seized the opportunity to form yourself into my belly. I wish you to keep yourself so active as you do since the 3rd month, I wish you to stay safe as in the first examination. The countdown to your arrival has started and I promise you that you’ll find everything you need.
Your mom đź’Ś