A New Chapter

Pregnancy is at once a deeply personal experience and a communal celebration. Only the pregnant person knows what it feels like to grow a new being into existence but does so in front of an audience. There are baby showers, belly rubs, and guessing games from loved ones; and intrusive albeit well-meaning questions from strangers. But pregnancy in a pandemic pulls the curtain on this performance.

Jenna Saso Rosati ’13, president-elect of the SCU Alumni Board of Directors, already did the public pregnancy thing. Her first son was born in 2019, when family and friends could flock to her hospital bedside and shower the new babe and new mom with praise and love. But the second time around, her experience was markedly different.

“It’s fun, usually. You walk around, people ask when you’re due, there’s usually this excitement over the concept of bringing a person into the word,” she says. “There just wasn’t much of that this time. People are less outgoing or willing to engage in conversation…it was more isolating.”

Jenna was pregnant later on in the pandemic when things were slightly more open but many of her doctor visits were restricted to just. Her husband, Joe, though, was there when she delivered their second son in 2021. Whereas after her first birth, “there was a nonstop stream of people and nonstop excitement, this time was the total opposite,” she says. “My husband and I just stared at him for 48 hours straight and fell so in love.”