The pandemic changed everything about my prenatal care. And then I lost my baby.

What women’s healthcare providers are getting wrong during the COVID pandemic.

The first time I became a mom, I called my healthcare provider to schedule my first prenatal exam, and choked back hormonal tears when they told me I wouldn’t be seen until I was at least 12 weeks along. The nurse on the other end of the line fumbled as she explained the policy, dancing around the topic of miscarriage the way most people do when they don’t want to scare you.

“Oh. Okay, I get that,” I thought to myself. No biggie. And then I went on to have a really uneventful pregnancy with zero issues. I was one of the lucky ones, they would tell me in my exams at 12 weeks, 16 weeks, 20 weeks and so on. I was that glowing pregnant woman, full of life and twice the extra blood flow, growing an entire human plus an extra organ. I was powerful.

I had my son on November 11 and felt like the luckiest new mother alive. Throughout my pregnancy, I was treated with so much care and love by my doctors and nurses. Then I was sent home, baby in arms, to heal. After that, I never heard from my midwife again. I had some postpartum questions for her that went unanswered on our shared portal, and I, like many mothers before me, figured out the answers to those questions on my own and moved on.

The second time I found out I was pregnant, I felt like I knew the ropes. They weren’t going to see me for 12 weeks — fine. This time, however, there was a global pandemic going on. We were one of those couples that got pregnant within the first month of quarantine — we thought it was kind of funny that we would one day have a “Quaran-teen”.

I was grateful not to have to risk exposure in a waiting room, but I have to tell you — the first virtual visit with my doctor felt pointless. They asked me some basic questions about how I was feeling, nodded through my answers and recommended we wait until my 12 weeks visit to have the first ultrasound and the NIPT, the test that most women over 35 take at 10 weeks to screen for genetic anomalies. This exam also has the ability to share gender results early — and this time around I was impatient to find out if we were going to be welcoming a baby brother or sister for our son.

I was also told that I would need to come to my ultrasound alone — but they would let me video my husband since he couldn’t be there by my side. I was sad about that, and learned in my What To Expect community boards that I shared that sadness with thousands of expecting mothers around the world. We all felt a little robbed of that moment — to no fault of our doctors or nurses. The blame fell squarely with the virus that none of us understood.

As I passed the 10-week mark, I started to get antsy about the NIPT test. I really wanted to get it done, but it wasn’t an option. As I neared the end of my first trimester, I still hadn’t been examined physically by a doctor. In total, I had about four virtual visits with my provider —and never spoke to the same person twice, each one feeling more impersonal and disappointing than the last. I complained about it a lot to my husband. This time around, the relationship with my provider was a huge departure from my previous experience with them. I knew in my heart the pandemic had changed everything, and the isolation I was feeling was what everyone was feeling. I learned to accept it and carry on.

And then, in June, just one week from my first scheduled ultrasound, I started to bleed. Lightly at first. The provider asked me to come in right away. I put my work on hold, drove to the nearest location with my face mask on, and was crushed when I learned that a nurse would take my blood sample and send me back home. No meeting with a doctor. No ultrasound to check for a heartbeat. Nothing.

I called to plead to be seen sooner — they couldn’t make it happen for another week. The scheduler on the other line sounded overwhelmed, sad and unable to say what she probably wanted to.

I later learned that there was a shortage of ultrasound technicians at that time. Understandable considering many of them had been either laid off, furloughed or not willing to come back into a clinical setting. But at the time, in that moment, I didn’t understand. I felt desperate for answers and alone with my questions and worry.

I ended up finding a private ultrasound technician across town that was able to fit me in immediately after I told her my situation. Her office was warm and inviting, walls covered with adoring parents and sweet newborns. She was used to doing 4D ultrasounds with very pregnant mothers. More to prepare myself than her, I told her I was only there for a viability scan. I held my breath and my husband’s hand, and seeing the monitor hanging over our heads, knew immediately that our baby was gone. I felt my husband physically slump over when he saw the screen.

It took another week for my provider to officially call it a miscarriage. What was strange was that no one who worked for the company ever uttered those words to me over the phone or over video. I saw it come through the portal: Missed Miscarriage. The first doctor I spoke to averted her eyes and spoke to me as if she was reading talking points delivered a million times. “These things are common” and “The body knows”.

I know these phrases are meant to comfort us, but newsflash: they don’t. To be fair, there’s almost nothing you can say to a mother, whose lost her baby, to make it right.

Through the confusion of virtual communication in a pandemic, crossed wires and basic breakdowns of communication internally within the provider network, I would end up explaining, re-explaining and correcting multiple doctors and nurses on my state of health. In the end, I spent a night in the emergency room after losing a lot of blood, which ended with a D&C without sedation. By that point, I had been through 3.5 weeks of hell. I was numb, angry and ready to move on, but couldn’t. With my body not cooperating and my mind still grappling with the loss — I was never offered mental health support, even though it was a service they offered. (The only reason I learned about this was because a friend, who lost her pregnancy within a week of me, was seeing the same provider and knew it was a service. She had to ask for it, it was never proactively offered.)

Something else no one told me was that the provider would be uploading a tissue pathology report from my D&C to my portal. This report details what was removed in the D&C — I didn’t know that. When I had my D&C, I had already passed the majority of the “product of pregnancy” as they call it, during the EW visit, so there wasn’t much to detail. However, I made sure to call my friend and give her the heads up, because her report would outline if there was any “fetal material” and I couldn’t imagine how traumatic that would have been for her to stumble upon. She thanked me, and I don’t think she ever opened the report.

But she had the NIPT test done right before her pregnancy loss. She was able to learn what happened with her baby, who suffered a genetic anomaly. She was able to learn the baby’s gender if she wanted to, but decided they would rather not know.

I never got to learn much about what happened to my pregnancy. Time just wasn’t on my side. I felt always a step behind, reactive, frustrated.

No longer having a viable pregnancy changed the way my doctors and nurses. responded to me. In a time of absolute chaos and uncertainty, my pregnancy was already going differently and it felt like a life line. I cherished that, actually. I held onto my pregnancy the way a survivor holds onto a life raft — for dear life. In the adjustment from in-person care to virtual care, I lost the sense that my pregnancy mattered to my healthcare provider. And my pregnancy loss mattered even less.

My message to women’s healthcare providers is to remember this: the promises you make are the promises you keep — especially in a global pandemic.

You’ll forget my pregnancy — I won’t.

You’ll make less money on my D&C than on my healthy delivery. My pregnancy loss was a financial loss for you. It was a deeply personal loss for me.

And even though I lost this pregnancy, I will try again. Someday.

But next time, I won’t be choosing you for my care. I’ll take my pregnancy elsewhere. And pray for a better outcome.