Starts with something different: Pandemic alters births, weddings
courtesy of NATHAN TINSTMAN
Shane and Brandi Miller with their twins, Morgan and Eoin
Morgan and Eoin Miller (Photo by Nathan Tinstman)
Stephanie and Niles Kennedy, with children Nora and Harper. Baby Nora was born last October at the height of the pandemic.
Jaclyn Pheasant, owner of Dream Creations Event Planning in Smithfield
Nora Kennedy will have quite a story to tell one day about the year she came into the world.
Her mom, Stephanie Kennedy, gave birth to her last Oct. 2 at Washington Hospital. When her older sister, Harper, was born in 2018, members of her extended family could stream into the hospital to greet her.
But for Nora, only her dad, Niles Kennedy, could be at the hospital with her mom.
“There was a whole waiting room full of people when Harper was born,” said Stephanie, of Claysville. For Nora, “My husband was allowed to be there, and that was all. You were allowed to have one person with you throughout.”
Sure, they could connect with family through videoconferencing, but to have grandparents and other family not be physically present “was really hard,” Stephanie said.
The coronavirus pandemic may have stopped much of life in its tracks over the last year, but the world kept turning and babies continued to be born. There were probably somewhere around 130,000 babies born in Pennsylvania last year, 4 million in the United States and 140 million around the world.
And couples continued to be married. Some couples decided to delay their nuptials until this year or later, while others decided to go ahead and tie the knot, but in a much more scaled-down fashion.
Lives began over the last year, and couples embarked on their lives together, but COVID-19 inevitably changed how these momentous events occurred and the traditions associated with them.
First, hand sanitizer and masks became must-haves.
That’s what Jaclyn Pheasant found. A Smithfield-based wedding planner who operates Dream Creations Event Planning, she continued to handle all the logistics for couples saying their “I do’s.” When receptions followed ceremonies that did occur after the pandemic took hold, Pheasant said, she had to make sure photographers, videographers and others were rigorously following COVID-19 protocols.
And unlike nuptials that took place before the coronavirus crashed into our lives, masks and hand sanitizer became crucial items at receptions.
“I don’t think I had a table that didn’t have hand sanitizer,” Pheasant said.
As the world started slamming its doors shut last March, the wedding between Anne Marie Brehm and her husband, Avery, was looming. The Canonsburg couple had planned to be married April 4, with a full wedding party and about 200 guests present. But then shutdowns started, and their plans were thrown into disarray.
Brehm made it to the Washington County Courthouse to get their marriage license just before it was closed. The caterer and the bagpipe player they had booked for their wedding were scrubbed, and all the guests they had invited were told to stay away.
“We were very disappointed when we had to uninvite everybody,” Brehm said. Even the members of the wedding party ended up being sidelined once the wedding happened April 4 in an outdoor space near Hickory.
“It was still a beautiful wedding,” Brehm said. “Weddings are beautiful, but it’s the marriage that matters. If we had pushed the wedding back, did we really want to get married in the first place?
Last year was crazy, but fortunately we can look back on it now and laugh at how our wedding ended up happening.”
While couples have had the option of moving their nuptials to other spots on the calendar over the past year, births have been happening on their own timetable regardless of the pandemic.
Like Kennedy, Brandi Miller, a Bentleyville resident and the executive director of the Literacy Council of Southwestern Pennsylvania, added to her family in 2020. She and her husband, Shane, became the parents of twins on Dec. 8, and also faced limits on friends and family who could see Morgan and Eoin after they were born.
Miller did have a baby shower with friends before the twins were born, but with a significantly reduced guest list. She explained, “We had to prepackage all the food.” A baby shower was also held on the video conferencing site Zoom.
Before the pandemic, a photographer would take photos of newborns at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital, but that was suspended when the coronavirus hit, according to Chris Vitsas, the senior director of hospitality and operations at the hospital. A celebratory dinner has remained on the menu, he said.
“We’re not allowing a third party to take photos,” he said. “We just want to limit the number of people in the hospital.”
The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh also changed its procedures surrounding the baptism of infants during the pandemic. Masks and hand sanitizing have been required, along with social distancing, except for the brief moments during the ritual when the priest or deacon must be close to the infant: two annointings and the pouring of water over the baby’s head.
Cotton balls have been used for annointings, but then the cotton balls have to be burned since they contain holy oil and cannot be thrown away, according to Bob Dewitt, a spokesman for the diocese.
Three months have now passed since the birth of Miller’s twins, and they are growing. But still, some of their friends and family have yet to see them.
“I just can’t wait for them to meet everybody,” Miller said. “It’s hard, especially with the pandemic. You can’t go anywhere, either.”