Time will tell many tales when we look back on COVID-19 and its impacts on every aspect of life, including the experiences of birthing people. Mindy Cockeram wrote this interesting piece for Lamaze’s “Connect the Dots”, regarding anecdotal impacts of the virus on behavior and birth outcomes.
The piece acknowledges that COVID 19 has negatively impacted peoples’ health and the way people are getting medical care, including care for pregnant people. Increased anxiety, scarcity of resources, and economic inequities could all be factors in higher incidences of premature births, lower birth weights, NICU admissions and mental health issues.
But could there be unintended positives as well? Mindy talked to approximately 100 birth workers to collect their observations on how the current COVID-19 situation is impacting birth and she heard stories with interesting implications.
For example, fear of infection is keeping birthing people from going to the hospital unless they absolutely need to go. As a result, people are arriving in more advanced labor than they normally would and spending less time at hospital till birth (a practice supported by LAMAZE and ACOG to reduce interventions and improve birth outcomes).
Fewer people coming into hospital for routine checks can result in a higher nurse to patient ratio, which also can improve birth outcomes for laboring people.
Other interesting notes:
-Extremely focused support partners as most places allow only one person and this person cannot be replaced.
-Faster labors (and inductions) suggesting that fewer distractions from well-meaning friends and family could be helping labors to progress. Labor requires a steady supply of oxytocin and privacy, both of which can be easily diminished or lost by the casual observation and running commentary of visitors in the labor room.
- A more restful, healing postpartum as time is spent focusing on meeting baby and learning new skills versus entertaining visitors. New mothers are often exhausted and vulnerable and can benefit from private, uninterrupted time with baby, free from comment, in those first hours and days.
-More parent skin-to-skin contact as baby not passed around to friends and family.
-Increased interest in breastfeeding as families seek to leverage the protective immunity of breastmilk against an invisible viral enemy.
Of course, these collected observations do not constitute a scientific study or prove a cause and effect. Future study of collected data about this time will certainly be interesting. But meanwhile, if we could indeed find ways to ‘flip’ these restrictions into measures that can improve our birth experiences and outcomes in positive ways, well that really would be a silver-lining to birth in 2020.