Tales from delivery room: Four LI moms give birth during coronavirus pandemic

First-time mother Diana Levine shed joyous tears when her doctor delivered a seemingly healthy 6 pound, 3 ounce baby named Noah on April 8.

While resting the next morning with her son in the postpartum unit at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital, Levine unexpectedly learned she had contracted COVID-19 — prompting her to weep again.

The 34-year-old Massapequa resident had not shown any symptoms of the virus before testing positive.

“I was devastated,” she said. “All these thoughts went through my head. Could my baby be at risk? God forbid the baby somehow got it from me.”

Levine is one of four Long Island mothers who spoke to Newsday after giving birth between March 18 and April 19. The women detailed common feelings of uncertainty and excitement during pregnancy. But they also shed light on their modern reality.

Expectant mothers face a new world shaped by fear of unfamiliar, but necessary, hospital regulations, social-distancing rules leaving them without a support network of friends and family, and the bleak truth the highly contagious disease can kill.

Levine said she felt the brunt of a new hospital practice that caused her anguish. Her fiance and Noah’s father, Orlando Nuñez, 33, was in the delivery room to witness their newborn’s first gasp for air. But he was forbidden from staying with his partner in the postpartum room. Levine had nobody to immediately lean on when she was told she was infected with the coronavirus.

Father and son were also tested for the virus but the results, “thank God,” were negative, Levine said.

More than two weeks after Noah was born, Levine still hadn’t received medical clearance to hold him without wearing a mask and gloves. She can’t wait to bond with her baby like mothers have for generations before her, she said.

“I’ve never kissed him since he was born,” Levine said. “All I want to do is kiss him and smell him. I’m looking forward to that moment.”

Hempstead mom and daughter survive virus scare

Adriana Torres was seven months pregnant with her third daughter when COVID-19 nearly killed them both.

Torres, 41, of Hempstead, was rushed to NYU Winthrop Hospital last month after struggling to breathe for days, she said.

“I couldn’t breathe, I knew my daughter wasn’t getting enough oxygen,” Torres said in Spanish. “I didn’t have any energy — my lungs were in bad shape.”

When Torres’ oxygen levels dropped even more, hospital staff intubated and placed her in a medically induced coma, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Torres’ “miracle” baby was born April 8 via an emergency C-section, officials said. She weighed 2 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 16 inches. Leah was 29 weeks old at birth, the spokeswoman said.

Torres recovered enough to finally meet her daughter on April 17, officials said. She says divine intervention, and a great medical staff, staved off the coronavirus long enough to save her and Leah’s life.

“I’m very blessed. It’s because of God we are both alive. What a miracle,” she said. “I’m thankful to God and the doctors.”

Torres, who spoke by telephone while still fighting off a cough, was released from the hospital April 18 after 13 days, officials said. She has two other daughters, ages 3 and 22.

Leah is receiving treatment at NYU Winthrop’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where the infant is expected to remain for at least several more weeks.

Torres, who is from Colombia, has lived on Long Island for eight years. She misses her youngest and looks forward to Leah joining her two sisters and their father, Torres’ longtime boyfriend, in Hempstead.

Dr. Nazeeh Hanna, chief of neonatology at NYU Winthrop, reports Leah is a prized fighter who is eating like a champion.

“The baby is doing amazing and having full feeds,” he said.

As of Wednesday, Leah weighed 3 pounds, 6 ounces and measured 16.9 inches, hospital officials said.

'Completely different experience'

“Lonely” and “surreal” were some words Alison McMahon used to describe 24 hours of labor during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While McMahon, 34, was highly complimentary of the staff at Mercy Medical Center, acknowledging they did their best while trying to manage a health crisis, she and her husband, Michael McMahon, 39, of Island Park, said they noticed significant differences from when Alison gave birth to the couple’s first son.

The day before she went into labor, Alison McMahon was tested for the coronavirus. The results were negative. In order to join his wife in the labor room, Michael McMahon’s temperature was checked by the hospital staff, the couple said.

The apparent differences continued from there.

Even while trying to push out a baby, Alison McMahon said she kept an eye on her doctor who treated multiple patients in different rooms. When he would return to McMahon’s room, he took off his gloves and washed his hands before putting on new gloves. Staff in the labor department wore full PPEs, she said.

“It was a completely different experience,” McMahon said. “It just felt really lonely, surreal. I thought what is happening?”

She later learned other women who had been in labor had COVID-19.

“I was the only one of about five or six that tested negative,” McMahon said.

Despite a less personal experience, Finn McMahon was born April 19 weighing 8 pounds, 9 ounces and measuring 22 inches.

McMahon said she missed the support she received from her family during the birth of their son Luke, who is 2 ½. She feels for new moms who are being cheated out of the “excitement and joy” of pregnancy because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“What is supposed to be happy and joyful and full of visitors and people coming to see you, you can’t have any of that — it sucks.”

Following Finn’s birth, Michael McMahon was not allowed to join his wife in the hospital’s maternity wing.

It was there, however, that Alison McMahon spent a peaceful day with Finn, bonding, before they were discharged.

“It was 30 hours of one-on-one time. It was a beautiful experience,” she said. “We’re going to have quite the story to tell [Finn] when he gets bigger.”

'It was the very beginning of the shutdown'

Damian and Cara Becker consider themselves lucky.

The couple married two years ago. They recently purchased a home in Merrick, and Cara gave birth to the couple’s firstborn after 29 hours of labor. A healthy Nolan Becker checked into the world weighing 7 pounds, 8 ounces on March 18 at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital.

Life on Long Island still was relatively normal then. Cara Becker, 31, described a less rigid hospital experience.

“It was the very beginning of the shutdown,” she said. “Everybody who was working there was wearing masks. But they didn’t ask us to do that.” 

Other mothers who spoke to Newsday said wearing masks was required in the labor room. Neither of the Beckers were tested for the coronavirus at the hospital. When Cara and son were discharged on March 20, she began noticing how COVID-19 was changing Long Island at a breakneck pace during a stop at CVS.

“Like every person was wearing a mask and it was scary,” Becker said. “I was so focused on trying to birth the baby, I didn’t realize how severe it was until after I got out of the hospital.”

More than a month later, Becker says life as new parents is a constant adjustment. The couple shop for groceries online. They only go outside to their backyard for fresh air.

“It’s very hard not to be with our family during this time,” she said. “We could use an extra set of hands. I’m grateful my husband can work from home right now, which we wouldn’t be able to do normally.”

The couple bought a “baby book” online, in which they chronicle their days with Nolan.

“They asked if there were any world events the day he was born?” Cara Becker said of the book. “I wrote down — coronavirus pandemic.”