María plans to write Angelito a letter about his birth. It will include everything: her feelings about the pregnancy and about parenthood, along with details of this strained historical moment.
“She was inside me for so long, I just wanted to feel her in my arms. I was worried: Am I going to be a good parent? What did I know about it? How competent would I be?”
Nothing helped — not the breathing exercises she’d practiced with her doula, not the epidural. Cristal spiked a fever, and the doctor ordered a C-section.
The Lullaby Project began in 2011, an initiative of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute to promote maternal health and parent-child attachment through music. Now it reaches 300 families a year.
“I remember being excited about all the not-exciting parts of being a mom — little moments, like sitting and reading with them, holding them, just connecting with this little person."
They’d already talked about marriage as well as children. “For me to make the move cross-country, leaving everything behind, there had to be a future,” Rebecca says.
“So much was unknown at that point,” Jo Pierce recalls. “How someone infected with COVID would be impacted if they were pregnant, and how that would impact the baby.”
