Parents navigate pregnancy through new coronavirus protocols

Joseph Mejia’s phone will not stop buzzing.

It’s early January, and as the 31-year-old CAL FIRE firefighter battles a vegetation blaze in the San Diego area, his pregnant wife is in a distant doctor’s office sending him videos of their first child’s heartbeat.

Four long hours pass before the father-to-be can revel in the moment.

Before the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention crafted guidelines for prenatal appointments at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, Mejia would have been beside his new bride, Leanne, to hear that first ultrasound.

Yet, the couple is among those whose prenatal and delivery plans have changed drastically in the past year.

“The pandemic’s been tough on a lot of people,” Joseph Mejia said. “People are losing their jobs, losing their homes, their family members. But I’m alive, my wife is alive, I have a job, she has a job, the sky’s still the limit.”

While the Menifee newlyweds expect to give birth in mid-August with the worst of the pandemic behind them, current federal restrictions on in-person check-ups and other key prenatal appointments have sapped at least some of the excitement from these intervening months.

Many parents – those expecting and those who have given birth since March 2020 – know the feeling.

“It worries me how long this (pandemic) is going to go on and so it does scare me (giving birth this year),” Leanne Mejia said, “but I think for other reasons that it scares other people.

“The world is scary right now.”

Expecting the unexpected

Having tied the knot in October, the Mejias knew at the beginning of Leanne’s pregnancy how public health protocols implemented to stem the spread of the coronavirus could throw a wrench into even the best-laid plans.

And yet, they said, it still stung when they learned Joseph could not be there to hear the first ultrasound.

“It’s a big deal” being present for such an intimate moment, he said. “This is our first child and I wanted to be there with my wife to see the baby on the screen and hear its heartbeat. It’s been really rough (not being there for appointments), but we’ve been trying to find ways around it.”

Over the past few weeks, the father- and mother-to-be have visited third-party companies to be together in larger rooms for ultrasounds and sonograms.

The two were side-by-side in February when they learned a boy was inbound.

Everyone at these places wears a mask indoors, the couple said, and does their part to keep others safe.

“We’re trying to adapt to follow the rules,” Joseph Mejia said, “but also adapt so we can be together. We’re trying to find out what works for us. With COVID, people do what they feel they have to do. It’s your life. You only live once. I’m not reckless, but I can only be a father (for the first time) once, so I’m going to try to do what I can to see my kid up on that screen.”

The federal measures implemented at the outset of the pandemic prohibiting visitors from in-person prenatal appointments were intended to protect mothers-to-be, hospital staff and physicians from contracting COVID-19, said Dr. Marie Romero, an OB/GYN for the San Bernardino-based Inland Empire Women’s Center.

Twelve months later, plus-ones still are prohibited.

In lieu of having a spouse in the room, healthcare providers have allowed and continue to allow patients to FaceTime or conference call their loved ones, Romero said.

That way, “they can be present in spirit if not in person,” she said.

Never mind how he first heard his baby’s heartbeat, in the moment, Joseph Mejia realized one thing.

“My dream is coming true.”

Sacrifices made for safety

Brenda Cantlay learned she was pregnant in late 2019, sometime before her birthday and a few months before COVID-19 became a part of the national lexicon.

“I don’t remember exactly when I found out,” the first-time Rialto mother said. “Everything’s a blur before the plague.”

Shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom implemented a statewide stay-at-home order last March, Cantlay was furloughed from her remote customer service job, a fortuitous outcome in hindsight, she said this month, that allowed her to spend her last trimester off work.

By the time Cantlay gave birth in June 2020, only her fiance, Dwight Gilbert, was allowed by her side in the delivery room.

And if he left for any reason, they were told, he would not be allowed back inside.

Looking back now, Cantlay, 36, said she appreciates the time alone the CDC protocols afforded her family of three.

“I was glad to have that intimacy.”

Federal restrictions on who can be in the delivery room and where they can go are some of the biggest changes Romero, who practices full scope OB-GYN at Community Hospital of San Bernardino and St. Bernardine Medical Center, has seen in the past year.

And they still are evolving.

Early on, Romero said, no visitors were allowed in the delivery room if the mother-to-be tested positive for COVID-19. Over the past couple months, however, certain hospitals allow even a COVID-19-positive mother to have one visitor. In that case, Romero said, the designated family member – often a grandmother-to-be or spouse – is not allowed to leave the room.

“Honestly,” Romero added, “I think (limiting visitors) has been a great change. We’ve gone back to our roots with our policy because there’s a lot less noise coming from visitors. Usually in the delivery room, there’s the mom, the patient and the patient’s partner, and those are the people we’re really concerned about.

“We don’t want to have 12 different opinions in the room,” Romero continued, “so the new policy has helped us refocus on what the important things are, which are a healthy mom, a healthy baby and a safe delivery.”

Hard as it’s been not having their parents beside them these past several months, since returning home with their daughter, Carol, Cantlay and Gilbert have kept a tight bubble to reduce the risk of someone catching and spreading the coronavirus within the household.

While the two still travel to their parents’ houses a couple times a week, they’ve stuck to an early rule that if a grandparent travels elsewhere, they wait two weeks to bring their daughter around. It gets tough at times, not having someone else there to watch their little one for a bit, but Cantlay said the arrangement has kept everyone safe.

What eats at Cantlay most, though, is that her grandfather, Leonard Penner, was only able to see his great-granddaughter once, through a window, before he died last month at age 95.

“I was hoping the pandemic would die down for him to see (my daughter) in person and hold her,” said Cantlay, who named her daughter after her grandmother, Penner’s late wife. “Other relatives who are elderly too. I would love to bring (Carol) to them, but people in their 90s can’t be seeing anybody aside from a small group of people.

“That’s a big sacrifice,” Cantlay added. “If COVID wasn’t a factor, I would have spent my maternity leave taking (Carol) to see all my relatives, showing her off, having them cuddle her, but I can’t do that right now.”

A different delivery

The coronavirus pandemic was declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020, the same day Tiffany and Kash Galindo learned they had about nine months left as a family of three.

From the jump, Tiffany Galindo, 28, went to prenatal appointments alone, a stark, if understandable, difference from when she was pregnant with her first child two years prior. Having been present ahead of his son’s birth, Kash Galindo, 29, said he took the new normal in stride, even if it meant hearing his daughter’s heartbeat secondhand.

“All I cared about,” he said, “was that the baby and Tiff were OK.”

As weeks of uncertainty surrounding the gravity of the nascent public health crisis turned into months of rising concern, the Galindos shared news of the pregnancy over FaceTime and limited who they allowed inside their Riverside home.

Tiffany Galindo stayed home with their son for most of last year, while her husband, who works for the family air conditioning business, continued going into people’s houses with necessary precautions. The two had a much smaller baby shower than before, but said recently keeping their circle tight helped them enjoy their second pregnancy much more than their first.

“When we first found out (about the pregnancy) we didn’t really know what was going to happen,” Kash Galindo said. “You hear stuff from each side and you don’t know what to go on. That (uncertainty) allowed us to focus on what was important, and being forced to be home really allowed us to focus on our family, focus on spending time with our firstborn the last time it was just us three.

“We got a lot of one-on-one time with him that we probably wouldn’t have gotten before because we would’ve been with friends and family and at work and going on vacation,” he added. “This situation really forced us to just settle down and focus on everybody in our home versus everybody outside our home.”

The same technology that connected the Galindos to their friends and family last year kept the couple connected when, at the peak of the winter surge in coronavirus cases, Tiffany Galindo went to the hospital to give birth.

With cases, hospitalizations and deaths at pandemic highs in December, Kash Galindo had to wait outside the hospital until his wife returned a negative COVID-19 test.

Two hours he waited as she began labor.

Though the couple FaceTimed until he was let inside shortly before the birth of their daughter, Nora, “it was scary to go it alone,” Tiffany Galindo said.

“I can’t imagine being a first-time mom, being in there alone.”

While understandably frustrating for expecting parents, Romero said the prenatal and delivery room restrictions protect everyone with a stake in the pregnancy. Perhaps the biggest change to delivery room protocol, she added, was learning how to quickly don the necessary personal protective equipment before entering a room, “even if we have a head crowning.”

Meticulous as such a process can be during time-sensitive and highly emotional moments, Romero noted that none of her physicians or patients got sick before vaccinations became available.

Safety is of the utmost importance for all involved, she said, “because when things go wrong in the OB, they go wrong very, very quickly.

“The protocols are in place for a reason,” Romero added. “They work.”

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