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Where You're At: Baby On The Way During Pandemic

Kristofor Husted
/
KBIA

We at KBIA have found strength in our community during the COVID-19 crisis. In our documentary project “Where You're At,” we're calling our neighbors to see how they're coping with life changes in Missouri during the pandemic. If you’d like to share your story and how you are doing, e-mail us at news@kbia.org.

Here's my call with Blair Coleman in Columbia.

Transcript:

Hey, Blair, it's Kris. How's it going?

Good. How’s it going?

Good. So how are you doing?

I feel like I'm doing surprisingly well, given everything. Stress and anxiety are a little bit high right now, but I can't tell if that's the Corona virus or if that new parent stress. I don't know.

Right. Right. When's your due date again?

April 27.

Have you guys had any changes with how your doctor's appointments are going?

Yeah. So I had a doctor's appointment and my husband wasn't allowed to come with me. I had to get my temperature taken right away before I was let into the building. And I didn't get to see my normal doctor, which was weird. I had to see a different doctor. My normal doctor had to switch her hours around because of clinicals at the hospital.

Have you had to change like your birth plan at all?

So right now, Boone Hospital is where I'll be delivering and they have restricted guest access to one support person, which would obviously be my husband. So that has changed because ideally for me, I would have had my mom in there as well, but…

Yeah. Yeah. How's your mom handling it?

So my mom is immunocompromised. She's got Lyme disease. So she is actually really, really cautious and really aware of not only how her being around could affect me and the baby and Mike my husband, but also how it could negatively affect her, especially since I've been working. So. Yeah. I mean, she's taking it hard. It's her first grandchild so she's bummed. But we're making it work, you know?

So when the baby's born, she won't be able to hold the baby? Probably? Or how does that work?

Yeah. So you want your friends and family to visit a little bit at the beginning, but you also want to share that time with your spouse or significant other and your new baby. And you also want to like shield them from, you know, normal disease and influenza and stuff. I just think that it'll be longer than a two-week quarantine. I think my mom probably won't come to the house for, you know, the better part of a month. So we'll just be FaceTiming a lot trying to catch up that way.

What do you think life is going to be like on the other side of coronavirus for your family?

I think it's still going to look like quarantine. I think we're just going to quarantine until it's really safe and we feel really safe. It's just… everything feels really unpredictable. You know? Like just being first time parents, but also the state of the world right now. So it's hard to gauge what I think the future's going to look like, which is part of what is probably so nerve wracking about it.

Well, thank you, Blair, for the conversation. And hang in there.

Awesome. Thank you.

Kristofor left KBIA in fall of 2021
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