“I didn’t get to have this experience with anyone”: experiences of becoming a mother during the pandemic

ABSTRACT COVID-19 resulted in impacts across life experiences; this study focuses on impact on becoming a mother. People who were pregnant or gave birth in the US during the first year of the pandemic (April 2020-June 2021) were interviewed: six pregnant and 29 who had birthed. Interviews were analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Themes included Missing Out Isolation, First-time Mom Experiences, Pervasive Uncertainty, and Depression. Subthemes were loss of celebration, missed events, somewhat helpful role of technology, less education and perinatal care, not having elder wisdom, COVID-specific anxiety, anxiety, and less postpartum support. Implications for research and practice are presented.

• Publication year

  2023

• Venue

  Social Work in Mental Health

• Publication date

  2023-03-13

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/15332985.2023.2190437
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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