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The Pregnant Pandemic Perspective
The best and worst year of my life
I found out I was pregnant in November of 2019, just a few months before the coronavirus sent the world into a collective upheaval. My husband and I had been trying to conceive for a little over a year, so although we knew it was a possibility, we were pleasantly surprised if not cautiously optimistic. I was teaching, and the flu that year was rough. Students and staff alike were hit in droves, we didn’t have enough subs, schools all over were closing due to illness, and I was walking around with a happy secret trying not to touch anything.
In the early days, the coronavirus was nothing more than urban legend to me, something only faraway continents were contending. Aside from the news outlets I follow, my Twitter feed mostly consisted of jokes about it- a friend shared a photo his dad had texted him of a Corona beer exclaiming he had the antidote; several others mused if you had eaten or drank at x, played with y as a kid, or used the bathroom at z, then you were immune to the virus- that sort of thing. All jokes aside, I admit that I told myself for a long time it’ll never happen here.
I told myself that in December when I threw my husband a surprise 30th birthday party at a local dive bar where we crammed 50 of our closest friends and family. I told myself that when we spent New Years Eve in…
