As part of our “Pregnancy Through a Pandemic” maternity photo shoot expecting mother, Jenny, shared her experience with pregnancy and marriage. She shares her experience with having two major life events during Covid.

JENNY’S STORY

I was a Covid bride. Our wedding was planned for August 8, 2020. We were originally going to have it at Rowena’s Inn in Harrison Mills. We had a guestlist of about 120 friends and family, but the universe had other plans. Unwilling to put our lives on hold because of this pandemic, my husband and I decided to proceed with our wedding regardless, on our original wedding date. We had a small park ceremony, and then a backyard pizza party at my in-laws. 19 people total. It was very low key, but it was perfect for us. It was by no means the wedding we had planned, it was nowhere near as “nice”, but it was still every bit the wedding of our dreams, as we got to be married at the end of the day. I remember there being a time, thinking, wondering, whether we would even get to do a court wedding. Neither my husband or I wanted to put starting a family on hold, and to this day we still say going ahead and getting married was the best thing we ever did for us. We were lucky to become pregnant with our first child, a boy, relatively quickly. In fact, our little guys’ due date is August 9, 2021, a day after our 1 year wedding anniversary. To us, everything fell into place as it should have. Yes, we didn’t get to experience a big wedding, I didn’t walk down the isle, we didn’t have a big fancy reception and dancing the night away. We didn’t have a extravagant honeymoon, or babymoon for that matter, and I still wouldn’t trade what we got for anything. When I think about this pandemic and how it has changed the course of the start of our future together, it can be easy to get caught up in all the things we didn’t get to have. Same goes for my first pregnancy during Covid. It’s been isolating at times, feeling like I couldn’t see my friends or family, not having my husband being able to join me at appointments. This is our first child, many of these exciting moments we won’t get to have again. Many of my family or friends have never seen me pregnant. It’s a weird feeling that the next time they will see me, I may well have a child. As much as the last year and a half or so has dragged on, it also went by like a bit of a blur. If I’m being completely honest, looking back on this time, both my husband and I kept our jobs, we have very supportive family and friends, we got married, bought a house all during the pandemic. And despite having every unusual pregnancy symptom in the book, and feeling like I couldn’t do this some days, I am healthy and baby is healthy.  I feel very blessed. And now that the end is in sight, I look forward to the future with hope and enthusiasm. We can’t wait to meet our little guy and to show him the world!