Staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic: Day 14

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Actually, this is the first time I've ventured outdoors since the shelter-in-place order was issued in the San Francisco Bay Area. Imagine that, I have been indoors for the past 14 days!! And the reason that I went out was to go to my OBGYN appointment. The wee one's arrival is approaching and I'm visiting the doctor once a week starting from today.

Although I can still drive myself to the clinic, Anna chauffeurs me instead because I might experience contractions en route... and it's difficult to concentrate driving when my belly is the middle of a contraction (I experienced this while driving on the highway from Lodi to Concord last month). 


All of the childbirth classes I had enrolled in were cancelled; hence, I asked my OBGYN to walk me through some of the pain management options available to me once labour begins. I think that this is the most crucial part of my pregnancy's endgame: getting the wee one out safely for both him and me. It's like the last stages of Apollo 13's troubled journey to the Moon, when the ground crew tried to figure out how to turn the command module on, to find the right angle for the final approach, and to get the astronauts safely back to Earth. 

Yes, I just compared my impending delivery to the highly complex processes involved in any manned space flight (and specifying one of my favourite space flight stories of all time).

My pregnancy is expected to reach early term on Week 37. Around that time, my OBGYN wants to have me tested for SARS-CoV-2 as an outpatient so that the medical team can plan how to handle my delivery: Do I deliver following the regular plan of care or will they need to set up an isolation area for it? The bottom line, she assured me, is that the approach to care will be the same, only the environment and their risk management protocols might be changed.

The thing is: Week 37 falls around the time that epidemiologists expect the epidemic to peak. So that will be one very interesting story to tell the wee one when he's bigger.

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