Crunch Time

Sitting in my rocking chair taking a few deep breaths.

We hadn’t shared it on the blog yet but we are expecting Baby #2 any day now. I can tell you that the pandemic is about 8.5 months along because I took the pregnancy test the week we started shutting things down. I had some funny experiences I had forgotten to share - for example, I found out buying a pregnancy test when you’re the small town doctor is a little more difficult than anticipated, and due to a miscommunication between the pharmacist and me, somehow I accidentally bought 6 pregnancy tests.

We have 2 weeks (give or take) until Baby Girl arrives and of course it’s been the worst of the pandemic that the Midwest has seen. I luckily have gotten approval to work remotely doing video visits and phone visits at home alongside my husband who was working from home even prepandemic. However, I still feel every day I remain pregnant is a day we are trying not to bring COVID into our house. We are just ticking down the days. We removed our 3 year old from day care for the next two weeks and convinced my retired parents to watch him at their house out of town, but the members of our already very small family circle are also reporting positive contacts one by one. It feels suffocating. I spend my mornings as a primary care provider cringing at the notifications of positive test results in my elderly and institutionalized patients. I spend meetings hearing about surge planning and watching steadily rising graphs specific to the region where I live. I talk via phone/video to my patients who are either having significantly worsened anxiety - or don’t realize that the term “quarantine” means “don’t leave your house”. I do everything I can to make sure we have minimal in-person interaction in all we do - and then I turn on the TV and the high school football team is still playing their rival team. I scratch my head and I just can’t reconcile the world I live in and the world other people seem to live in. 

I am ready for Baby Girl to get here, but not in the way I was hoping. I wanted to be eagerly awaiting her arrival, not feeling like I have to rush her along so we can barricade ourselves in our house during maternity leave. I wanted to spend time with our 3 year old and enjoy his last moments of being our only child, not ship him off to Grandpa and Grandma’s so I can finish working. We’re doing okay, and we are lucky in so many ways. We’ll continue to take it here one day at a time, and I’ll try to take advantage of this quieter time as much as I can while it lasts.

Kicks