Table 2 Themes, subthemes and representative quotes derived from thematic analyses of participant interviews

Childbearing-Related Challenges to Everyday Life

Employment

I think the biggest stress there was knowing I was going to be working from home and having a toddler and being super pregnant … was just a lot on my plate at the time, for sure. [P4]

Access to Food

It’s just me doing everything right now. When I had the baby I had to come back and do my own groceries. I can’t call anyone. Because you don’t know who has what. My relatives, I couldn’t call. You just don’t know. [P8]

Transportation

Going all the way down to Mount Sinai, you can’t take a bus on Jane Street, because the busses are still packed. There’s no distancing on that. I have to take the baby, I’d rather not. [P8]

Increased Worry, Uncertainty and Fear

Worry

I would think oh I’m going to take him to the library and read to him every day. And we’re going to go on walks and stuff and all that stuff was just out the window. I was very worried that he was going to have problems being social with strangers. […] But I’m sure there are lots of people who are not coping with this well at all. And it’s going to have a lot of long lasting effects for them and their children and their relationships. [P9]

Uncertainty

So the unknown was really, really challenging. […] like no children have passed away from it but it’s really – I don’t know, it’s that unknown. It’s that fear of not understanding – like it hasn’t been around for so long that you understand and you can quantify what it is. [P6]

Fear

I was kind of annoyed and a little bit angry and I was also concerned. Because my partner, my boyfriend, he was still working full time. And he didn’t have the option of taking the time off. So we were just - we didn’t know a lot about COVID and we were concerned that if he caught it, he would bring it back to me and then subsequently me and the baby. [P9]

Persistent and Pervasive Sense of Loss

Expectations vs Reality

I just felt robbed of the experience. [P4]

I don’t know, you kind of have this idea of what your mat leave is going to be like and then it’s really not like that. [P1]

Bonding With Baby

And it’s everybody’s first grandkid so they’re really definitely sad about missing out on this time… It just feels like they’re just babies for such a short time and … I don’t know, I feel like because we got to see what it was like before the lockdown, just seeing how much joy she brings everyone and how happy everybody is, and having them not be able to see her just really sucks. [P1]

Family Support

I have my sister, I have my aunt, but because they were moving around, the thing is, they weren’t stopping their life, so I called them on the phone, but they wouldn’t come to me. You know, for us, the community and our culture is, we get together. We do family things. We meet every time. Every week we are together, we are eating, but now that was disconnected because they would not come, they are moving around, they have kids in daycare. So that was like gone because of the COVID. So we talked on the phone. That supposedly was support, but not as much as I wanted. [P3]

Challenges To Care

Access

I wasn’t able to go to pelvic floor physio which really was a bummer for a while because I think I have a lot of problems that would probably be helped by that and it just kind of sucked to – again, it’s just one of those things where it’s like everything you read, “Here’s what you should do to help with these things. You just can’t do those things.” So it was kind of upsetting for a while to feel like I know I needed help with this and needed some help with the healing side of things and I just couldn’t get it. [P1]

Quality

I think there’s a real benefit of breastfeeding, like lactation consultants, or a midwife or someone helping you breastfeed in person. Because I did it, virtually, once or twice and it was awkward and hard. I wanted someone right there with me. It’s just such a personal thing and they need to be right there to see so closely with the baby. [P5]

Strategies for Coping with Pandemic Stress

Approach to Pandemic Information

Seek out information: What helped me is I do my own research. I read a lot. Sometimes it is good. Sometimes it is not good ... Yeah, because what I do is I panic, because, yeah, I seek information. I like reading from the reliable sources. That helps me a lot. [P3]

Avoid Information: I’m an information seeker for sure but I found, with COVID, it was just almost too much information. [P5]

Adaptive

I’m on the phone all the time, I guess that’s my coping mechanism. [P10]

Maladaptive

I didn’t feel comfortable doing workouts on my own, because I wasn’t sure, you know, what was going to be safe, you know, monitoring my heart rate, things like that. [P2]