On
November 25, Genesis Paras announced to her family and friends over Instagram
that she had a new baby girl.
“Everyone meet our
little bat Harlow Phoenix Paras,” she wrote.
اضافة اعلان
All baby
announcements are somewhat of a surprise; no one can ever be sure when a baby
will be born. But this one was especially startling because Paras, 31, a
stay-at-home mother in Anaheim, California, hadn’t told anyone outside of her
parents and her husband’s parents that she was pregnant.
“My grandmother was
like: ‘I am sorry. What? When? Where? How?’ She was the most shocked of
anybody,” Paras said. “One of my best friends was mad at me. He was like,
‘Dude, why didn’t you tell me?’”
Paras had had
traumatic experiences with past pregnancies. She had a series of miscarriages,
and a newborn baby girl had died. (In addition to Harlow, she has a son who is
two.)
COVID added to the anxiety she already felt about being pregnant, and she
didn’t want to jinx it. “With COVID and how pregnant women are so susceptible,
the whole pregnancy I was terrified I was going to die or she was going to
die,” she said. “I felt it was too good to be true.”
While the pandemic
added to her anxiety, it also gave her a way to avoid seeing anyone and sharing
her news. Her unvaccinated son gave her the perfect excuse to stay at home and
away from gatherings so no one could see her growing belly.
“Keeping it a
secret made my pregnancy so much more peaceful,” she said. “I didn’t have to listen
to people tell me it would be OK or to stop being scared. I had my space to
feel whatever I wanted, and I could stay in my own bubble.”
“I wish there was a
way for women to be able to hide they were
pregnant even without a pandemic,”
she added. In pre-pandemic times most pregnant women, of course, didn’t have
the luxury of deciding when they shared their news. They had to go to work and
social events, and once they started showing, it was obvious they were
expecting.
Some women,
especially front-line workers, still don’t have that choice. But the pandemic
has transformed the reality for many others, allowing pregnant women to stay
out of sight of colleagues (if they are working remotely) and friends and
family, since socializing is so limited. With that comes the freedom to talk
about their pregnancy when they are comfortable and when they feel it won’t
harm them professionally or psychologically.
“Many of the women
I have seen during the pandemic have chosen not to tell people they are
pregnant until they feel ready,” said Katayune Kaeni, a psychologist who
specializes in perinatal mental health. “The ability to keep it from other
people because of Zoom has benefited a lot of people.”
This is
particularly true of women who have high anxiety or have experienced pregnancy
loss like Paras. “It can be incredibly stressful to field questions from people
who have the best of intentions but don’t know how their questions are landing
or how they can feel minimizing or insensitive,” Kaeni said.
Other pregnant women
are happy to keep their pregnancies a secret to avoid judgment from others.
Fabulous Flores,
30, a graduate student who lives in Absecon, New Jersey, gave birth to a girl
in May. When she got pregnant she was not married to her boyfriend, and she was
relieved not to have to tell her mother and contend with her disapproval at
such an emotionally fraught time.
“My mom would not
be OK with me having a child out of wedlock, and I was afraid to tell her, so I
was glad to put it off until I was ready,” she said. “Luckily my mom was very
strict and stayed inside, and we did as well, so no one had to see each other.”
(Once the baby arrived, her mother got onboard and is now a supportive
grandmother.)
Flores also felt
relieved not to have to show her changing body to other people: “I was so
nervous that I would get huge and swollen and wouldn’t want people to see me,”
she said. “Part of me was like, ‘Am I not attractive anymore because I am a
mom?’ I was happy to not have to see people’s reactions.”
Then there are professional
concerns.
“Women are often
reluctant to announce they are pregnant, and not without good reason,” said
Dina Bakst, a founder and co-president of A Better Balance, an organization
that helps workers, especially mothers. “Bias against pregnant women and
mothers continues to be rampant in the workplace, and this bias takes many
forms. It can be intentional, it can be implicit, it can be unconscious, it can
be structural.”
Bakst said that
often when a woman announces she is pregnant, “stereotypes kick in that she is
less committed to her job and less capable.”
She gets calls, she
said, from women who announce they are pregnant and then get passed over for a
promotion or taken off a project that requires travel or late nights.
Of course, not all
pregnant women have the luxury of hiding their stomachs on Zoom. A front-line
nurse or a woman working in a factory can’t do their jobs remotely. And even if
a woman can work remotely, she can’t keep her pregnancy a secret the entire
time. In states with paid family leave, employees are required to give 30 days’
advance notice if they intend to use paid maternity leave and other benefits.
But women with the
option of keeping their pregnancies private during the pandemic have discovered
many advantages in doing so.
Adrienne Alexander,
36, who works for a labor union in
Chicago, couldn’t hide her pregnancy five
years ago when she had her first daughter. When she had her second daughter in
July 2020, she shared her news with only her immediate team with whom she works
closely so they could prepare for her maternity leave. But she found it
refreshing that most of her other colleagues didn’t know. “It’s just easier to
not answer people’s questions or for it to be the topic of conversation every
single time,” she said. “I didn’t want my identity to be about being a mom.”
There are some
downsides to keeping a pregnancy private.
It can feel lonely for no one to know, Paras said. “I felt
like I needed advice sometimes dealing with a toddler and being pregnant,” she
said. “There were times I felt I needed to vent to someone or tell someone I
had a lot of anxiety. But I am still glad I didn’t tell anyone. It was the
easier of two evils for me.”
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