Quarantined One Day After Giving Birth To Baby – New Mom Tells It All

The day after she gave birth, Gemmicah Argonza got the call.

“Did you go to the 7-11 in the basement China World on April 28?” The voice on the line said, “A positive COVID case was found there.”

Her mind raced: Was she there on the 28th? Would she have to go to central quarantine? What about her husband? What would happen to her daughter? Would they take her too?

It’s the call no one wants to get, much less if they’ve literally just had a baby.

In a way, they were prepared for the worst.

A Philippine native, Argonza ran the only Filipino restaurant in the city, Mesa Madre, located in Jianwai Soho. Her husband, Clifford Weiner, was General Manager of Hotel Jen. Both of them were smack in the middle of the Central Business District – an area that would soon be swept up in the citywide Covid lockdown.

From mid-April, both Argonza and Weiner watched with trepidation as the cases in Beijing grew at a worrying pace, and communities in Panjiayuan, Shuangjing, and Jinsong – just a mile south of them – were closed off one after another.

“We had seen what happened in Shanghai, and we worried it would happen here,” Argonza recalls. News of quarantine shelter conditions, parents being separated from children, and lack of access to supplies were everywhere.

As she was due on April 28, they stocked up on a month’s worth of supplies. “I kept saying, ‘C’mon baby, come out already,’” Argonza recounts. “The last thing I wanted was to give birth in the middle of a lockdown.”

There's more to this story! This article originally appeared on our sister site, Jingkids International.

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READ: What If I Go Into Labor During Lockdown?

Images courtesy of Gemmicah Argonza