Midwifes - what do you honestly think about people trying for a baby during Covid?

[VinoMerino]

I went to reach out of my precious midwife to ask what she knew about ttc and the vaccine, as I'm getting so much conflicted info but I'm worried she'll judge me for even thinking of deliberately getting pregnant right now. Am I being stupid? Midwives, what are your thoughts on people actively trying to get pregnant during all of this?

It will depend a lot on the hospital. Here we can’t space out women on the wards more, there’s nowhere else to put them. The joys of an old unit in a separate building. It’s why partners can’t go into the postnatal ward at all, the bays are too small.

C sections, no more availability because the maternity theatres are separate from the main hospital’s theatres.

Staff levels heavily impacted - some units are down 30%+ of clinical staff. So it’s definitely not the case that COVID isn’t affecting maternity.

Initially we did space out the postnatal ward more - we tried using every other bed. It just wasn’t possible though, we couldn’t half our capacity as we still needed all the beds. However everyone is given a covid test before being admitted and are regularly reswabbed while they remain an inpatient which hopefully reduces risk. Birth partners are swabbed too, and then if they’re negative they can have visiting slots on the PN ward. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we can do with the space.

Def no extra access to theatres, as previously we’d often ‘borrow’ another anaesthetist from elsewhere in the hospital if we wanted to open multiple theatres at once. Now, the anaesthetists are generally very tied up with ITU and so if we want to run multiple obstetric theatres at once it has to be a real life threatening emergency as we know we’d be pulling them away from something life threatening elsewhere. We still have anaesthetic cover for labour suite though.... there has only been one occasion I can think of where a woman didn’t get an epidural because the anaesthetist was ventilating someone elsewhere in the hospital and it’s never stopped an emergency theatre case.

Like I said before, it hasn’t stopped me wanting to ttc now. I do go into it with my eyes open though, and I know if I needed to be admitted antenatally for any reason my daughter wouldn’t be able to visit me at all. And because we have limited childcare, realistically my husband wouldn’t either. I appreciate he may miss scans (because scan rooms are so small and can’t allow for social distancing) and that generally things might not be as they normally are.

I think if you are wanting to get pregnant during coronavirus pandemic...Go for it. Life is too short to not do what makes you happy. We only have so much time to be able to create and grow a baby. I'd avoid the vaccine until after baby is born.

Princess Eugenie gave birth today, bet nobody is berating her!

I'm pregnant, wasn't planned ....but we did want a 3rd and would have possibly started trying Jan/Feb.....except I'm not sure if we would have seeing how awful the whole Covid thing is...... I'm glad it happened though my midwife is delighted. Life goes on I guess.....