When quarantine first began, back when some of us naively thought it would truly just be two weeks long, Twitter predicted a baby boom; so many couples were off work, locked in with each other and little to do. That, it turns out, was wrong; a study from the Brookings Institution predicts a long-lasting baby bust, with 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births in 2021. Perhaps we underestimated the libido-bursting qualities of a global pandemic and widespread unemployment.
Parents who were already expecting when the pandemic began had to navigate constantly-changing hospital protocols, or go into labor wearing a surgical mask. Nevertheless, some brave souls still decided to get pregnant; now, babies conceived during the pandemic have been born, gestated completely within this new normal. What convinced these parents to take the plunge and did they know what they were in for?