Forbidden.
First they came for our waves and we said nothing because we were too busy watching Tiger King. Then they came for our reproductive rights but we said nothing because we were all deeply considering polyamorous homosexuality thanks to Tiger King.
Then sharks ate the few remaining surfers as our kind forever vanished from the face of the earth.
And you make think the above a wildly fantastical scenario but ponder your life right now, locked indoors, unable to go to restaurants, unable to go to bars, forced to wear bandanas over our faces in public, performing “air elbow bumps” to friends via Zoom, discouraged from using this down time to procreate in order to usher anti-depressive joy into this depleted world in six months time.
Wildly, impossibly fantastic but as real and true as the bandana over your face.
Shall we turn to the buzzkill doctors at CNN for more? Let’s be honest, we have nothing better to do.
“I don’t foresee a baby boom in nine months,” Dr. Renee Wellenstein, an OB/GYN and functional medicine specialist in upstate New York, told CNN.
In a less severe context, like a snowstorm, sure — it’s quite common to see an uptick in births nine months later.
She noted that couples spend more time cozying up indoors during the late fall and winter. Consequently, “in the northeast we see more babies in the late summer and fall months,” she said.
Although being snowed in can be a little fun and lead to romance, the pandemic is stressful for couples: “[The] libido is down and menstrual cycles may be off,” Wellenstein said. “It may not be possible to conceive due to this.”
But for couples who still have the urge, Wellenstein said she would “absolutely not” advise anyone to get pregnant now, due to the uncertainty swirling around Covid-19. “You can push off conceiving and getting pregnant,” she said.
There are a number of risk factors, starting with the fact that there’s simply less care available in many areas as hospitals prioritize more resources toward helping the surge of Covid-19 patients being admitted.
And for women who are already pregnant, each trip to the hospital during the pandemic carries additional risk.
“It’s never ideal to have any infectious disease during the pregnancy due to the unknown impact on the child,” Wellenstein said. “To enter a hospital puts her at risk.”
Regardless of where the science ultimately lands on transmission of the novel coronavirus in the placenta, it’s a risk not worth taking, Wellenstein says. Once the baby is born, we know with certainty that she is at risk from any virus carriers she may come in contact with.
So lame.
But, seriously… how far down the polyamorous homosexuality path are you, conceptually?
