Family Planning Is Still Affect By COVID-19 In 2022

According to AAP’s guidelines, the mother and the baby can stay in one room as long as the mother is well. The chances of the infant acquiring a virus during birth can be controlled by taking extra care. If we protect the newborn from the mother’s infection and respiratory secretions, the child can easily be saved from getting infected. 

Family Planning Is Still Affect By COVID-19 In 2022

Kyara White gave birth to her first child during the first wave of COVID-19, while she herself was COVID positive. During the pandemic, When she gave birth to her first baby, she had no idea what to expect. She further stated that she was hoping that everything would get over with a good end. She does not want to go through a C-section. Everything was new to her. 

After a week of recovering from COVID-19, she again tested positive. It was the mistake of the hospital authorities as they changed her reports from someone else’s. She could not see her baby, who was in the NICU, till everything got sorted out. 

Until today, COVID-19 is still affecting family planning. Parents are still in a dilemma about whether to plan a child during a pandemic or not. Can they protect their baby from getting infected? There are many unanswered questions in everyone’s minds.

There are still some hospitals in the US that lack the facilities to put a COVID-positive mother with her new infant in the same room. Keeping mother and baby together can help with breastfeeding and foster bonding—instead, the doctor separates mother and child.

Feldman-Winter said in reply to Kyara White that they knew how to take care of mothers and infants, even if the mother was COVID positive, but during the start of the pandemic, they were unsure about skin-to-skin contact. 

According to the evidence of the  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is a meager chance of an infant getting infected if the parents are taking all the precautionary measures like wearing masks, sanitization, and maintaining social distance. 

The organization advises parents who are planning a baby to talk to their health care provider before planning anything. They should know the advantages and disadvantages of keeping the infected mother with her newborn. Keeping the duo together after birth helps a lot with mother-infant bonding. It also makes breastfeeding easier. 

During the early days of the COVID-19, when people were still researching what to do and how to do it, during deliveries, the COVID positive were separated from their infants in hospitals. 

Unfortunately, hospitals are not advanced and lack some technology. That’s why they separated the mother from their newborn, and they will continue to do so. According to Bagwell, COVID-positive parents are separated from their newborns till they quarantine themselves for 10–14 days. 

According to Batrick, there should be a survey of the hospitals regarding the policies of infected mothers and newborns, whether they are still separating mothers from their infants or not. It would be beneficial to predict the standard care of hospitals. However, hospitals should update their policies regarding this. She further stated that some people have very low tolerance levels, and some have high ones. 

If a hospital has updated its policies and has all the technology, it means they have started keeping the mother and newborn in the same room, which helps in maintaining the mother-baby bond.

According to Becky Mannel, there are still so many hospitals that lack these facilities, and they use COVID-19 as an excuse to do whatever they want to do. They keep separating the COVID-positive mothers from their infants. 

Mannel also stated that due to this, the new moms are in a dilemma. What if they test positive for COVID? It will be a threat to their new one.