First let’s talk about the steps you can take recommended by the CDC to prevent yourself from becoming infected from COVID 19. Staying at home whenever you are sick, avoiding close contact with sick people, washing your hands at least 20 seconds with soap and water. Also, not touching your mouth or nose or eyes with unwashed hands, always disinfecting and cleaning objects that have come into contact with other things frequently.

If you have to sneeze or cough, cover your face, social distancing- you need to keep at least a 6-foot distance from other people, avoiding crowded places and recently it was recommended that if you go out in public, you should wear a mask to help protect yourself.

So, two big things that pregnant women are going to face in regards to having to go out will be those essential grocery shopping trips and those prenatal visits. So, first with grocery shopping, try to get someone else to do it if that’s possible. If not, there’s a lot of options that you can do instead of having to go directly to the store like you can do delivery, you can do online shopping or you can do a pickup service.

So, with my experience what I do is I do either shop online where they deliver it to my house. Now, if that is the case, whenever I get the packages, have to open up the boxes, I always wash my hands because I don’t know where that boxes been. After all that, of course, I do hand hygiene after putting all the groceries up and everything and that decreases my risk of coming in contact with the virus.

Next, our prenatal visits which again is another essential thing that a pregnant woman has to go to. It’s recommended that pregnant women keep going to their prenatal visits. Now, unfortunately the further along you get you really have to go to these visits in person because your provider is going to be measuring your blood pressure and you’re looking at your urine for glucose and protein. That’s looking and screening for gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. Also, they are listening to baby’s heart rate, measuring your fundal height, making sure everything’s going well and you really can’t do that over the phone or through a video chat.

So, whenever you go to your OB office, you need to call them and you need to ask them okay what are some things you all are doing to help keep me safe and what are some things that I need to do because if you live in a high-risk area, you definitely want to implement very strict steps whenever you have to go to these visits and my experience is that whenever I go there they always, screen everyone to ask you questions where they let you in. I also wear a mask to my

Visits. Everyone who’s working in the area including the physicians are wearing masks and I keep a social distance from everyone. So, all the chairs they have them taped off; so you can only sit in certain areas so you’re not close to people.

Also, I make sure that I wash my hands immediately afterward. I don’t touch my eyes, nose or mouth and I disinfect everything that came into contact with that office and lastly, you always want to make sure that you are avoiding trying any type of like herbal treatments or things that say they can cure the corona virus or prevent the corona virus without consulting with your OB provider because there’s a lot of things that circulate on social media and on the internet that say that it can help out and unfortunately there have been some stories of people who have tried some of these things and they have either experienced some really bad side effects or they have died. So, always be leery of those things.

So, with pregnancy there’s a lot of fun things you get to do. You’re going to do a baby shower and you can do a gender reveal. However, during this time with the corona virus and social this insane those things really are not a great idea. So, you have to get a little creative and what you can do well first of all if you’re doing a little bit later on maybe you can postpone it. But, if you’re not you can get creative and do something online like live stream with your family and have something like that or have them send gifts you online or do an online registry.

Next, you want to start planning for the birth of your baby. Now, regardless if you’re delivering in a few months or you’re delivering this fall because they potentially say that this virus could make a comeback for this fall, so you want to be prepared. So, ask yourself where do you want to deliver it. Do you want to deliver at home; is a home birth for you? If so, you want to make sure that you research that. Look the pros and cons and hire a midwife and a doula and get the supplies necessary to do that or if you want to deliver in a hospital, make sure you know what hospital you want to deliver at, what are their policies?

A lot of hospitals right now are canceling those birthing tours where you could ask those questions and you want to see if you are going to have to give birth during this pandemic. Plus you need to prepare for the worst-case scenario. In case you have to deliver at the hospital without anyone with, you need to mentally be prepared for that.

Stay tuned with Zeebale for more of such updates and news!!

Share this: Twitter

Facebook



Like this: Like Loading...