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women

    RADIO

    Meet the Women DJs of WOMR

    The station will host its annual International Women’s Day marathon

    By

    WOMR’s International Women’s Day celebration began in 1988, says Denya LeVine, one of its “founding mothers.” But only in the last 10 years has the station been doing it consistently, every year. On Monday, March 8, 16 female DJs will bring you 18 hours of music and thought-provoking interviews. The Independent visited five of them to talk about their experiences on radio.

    Indira Ganesan

    “I had trouble making myself understood — that’s why I took to writing,” says Indira Ganesan, who was born in India and moved to the U.S. when she was five. She has since published three books. Ganesan first came to Provincetown as a fellow at the Fine Arts Works Center in the ’80s. She’s been living here full-time for eight years, with her two cats. “It’s a quiet life,” she says.

    Indira Ganesan in her Provincetown study. (Photos Saskia Maxwell Keller)

    She has always been a “record nerd” and listened to the radio — “Music was this constant” in her life. South Indian and North Indian music are really different, she explains. As a child, she found the former “terribly boring,” but was introduced to the sitar, a North Indian instrument, by the Beatles. Her radio show, Namaste, includes all kinds of global and popular music.

    She says that though there is no lack of female DJs at WOMR, there are too few elsewhere in the country. One of the earliest was Alison Steele, on WNEW-FM in New York City, known for her sultry voice. Part of the bias in broadcasting, Ganesan says, may be the stereotype that women are shrill. And so, it is assumed, “Do people really want to hear women and their voices?”

    Felice Coral

    Felice Coral’s regular WOMR program on Wednesdays focuses on classical women composers of color, both historical and contemporary: Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Julia Perry, Tania León, and Valerie Coleman. It’s a tall order to pack all of it into one hour, Coral says.

    Felice Coral at Lecount Hollow Beach.

    “I had to admit my own deficiencies even as a long-established classical music lover,” she says. “We’re raised in the white Eurocentric framework.” Price, for instance, was a Juilliard-trained pianist and composer, but has fallen into near obscurity. “There’s the overall sexism, and then, superimposed on that, there are the racial issues,” she says.

    Coral, who has lived in Eastham for the last six years, previously worked in health care. She played piano and listened to opera growing up, but let her musical interests drop because she was working all of the time. About 20 years ago, she started taking flute lessons.

    “I enjoy doing my shows because I also learn a lot,” she says. “It has enriched me as an individual. Putting this program together has opened my eyes significantly to the successes of people I knew nothing about.”

    Denya LeVine

    A WOMR DJ for 35 years, Denya LeVine, along with Pandora Peoples and Dinah Mellin, are the organizers of the International Women’s Day marathon. LeVine started studying violin at the age of nine, and plays Celtic, folk, and klezmer music with several bands. She is also passionate about playing in assisted living homes.

    Denya LeVine at her home in Wellfleet.

    Though she’s not Irish — “I’m Eastern European Jewish,” she says emphatically when asked — she’s spent a great deal of time in Ireland, a homeland of sorts. In the first two years of International Women’s Day broadcasts at WOMR, she organized a live feed from a women’s pirate radio station in Galway.

    This year, she interviews Karan Casey, “one of the best-known Irish singers,” who started the organization Fair Plé to address gender equality, the pay gap, and sexual harassment in Irish music. LeVine says the scene was heavily male-dominated, but “the organization ended up changing the culture.”

    Pandora Peoples

    “I was born in Venice, Calif., in a bungalow to hippie parents,” says Pandora Peoples. She came to Cape Cod 10 years ago. She’s a shamanic healer, herbalist, and belly dancer, and her weekly radio show focuses on healing arts and metaphysics.

    In her programming, she looks to “matrilineal cultures, goddess cultures, and priestesses,” she says. “International Women’s Day is another opportunity to reclaim some kind of power. There are a lot of activists at WOMR. People’s rights, earth rights — it drew me in.”

    For Peoples, International Women’s Day is “about telling local stories.” One example is Dinah Mellin’s interview with Lysetta Hurge-Putnam, executive director of Independence House in Hyannis. “We have really great infrastructure,” she says. “I appreciate that about this place.”

    Dinah Mellin

    On her radio show and in live performances, Dinah Mellin plays Celtic and fiddle music.  She used to run a program through Snow Library called “Allegretto,” which introduced children to different musical instruments. The goal was to tell them, “This is for everybody — this is a friend for life.”

    She was brought up in “a house of music,” she says. “I grew up in Manhattan. My dad had a ministry downtown. That’s where I had my first lessons around age nine.” Her mother composed and played the piano.

    She studied studio art, then commercial art and advertising. “I didn’t play for 13 years after graduating from college with an art degree,” she says. “I was walking around feeling like I was missing an arm or a leg.” Then she started fiddling again.

    Mellin doesn’t consider herself “the biggest feminist in the world.” But, she says, “I am a feminist because I believe in women’s rights.”

    Pandora Peoples (left) and Dinah Mellin at Mellin’s home in Orleans, which has a balcony perfect for house concerts.

    Women on Air

    WOMR, 92.3 FM, Monday, March 8

    6–8 a.m.: Justine Alten, “Women of Red Right Return”

    8–9 a.m.: Fran Sullivan, “Gospel and Blues”

    9–10 a.m.: Ann McDermott, “Cool Voices of Jazz”

    10–10:30 a.m.: Interview with Sheila Lyons

    10:30–11:30 a.m.: Susan Blood, “Stories From the Sisterhood”

    11:30 a.m.–noon: Mary Jane Byrne, “Sopranos, Mezzos, and Contraltos”

    Noon–1 p.m.: Felice Coral, “Classical Composers: Women of Color”

    1–2 p.m.: Ashley Stancil, “Women I’d Like to Lunch With”/Interview with Kathleen Walker

    2–3 p.m.: Carol Courneen, “Rootsy Women”

    3–4 p.m.: Janice Murphy, “Women on Broadway”

    4–5 p.m.: Democracy Now, with Amy Goodman

    5–6 p.m.: Denya LeVine, “Gender Equity in Celtic Music”/Interview with Karan Casey

    6–7 p.m.: Pandora Peoples, “Music for Social Justice”

    7–8 p.m.: Brenda Conlan, “Hopeful Tunes by Women”

    8–9 p.m.: Indira Ganesan, “Namaste Celebrates Women”

    9–10 p.m.: Nancy Edwards, “Soul Sisters”

    10–11 p.m.: Sandra H-Mc, “Spotlight on the World”

    11 p.m.–midnight: Dinah Mellin, “Celtic Music”/Interview with Lysetta Hurge-Putnam

    POD PEOPLE

    In a City Pod, Wellfleet Women Steadied by Small Town Roots

    It’s ‘us against the world’ all over again

    By

    WELLFLEET — When Hanna Morse, Emer Valdez, Charlotte Goldberg, and Leah Puffer were kids in Wellfleet, they spent as much time together as they could. They made crafts, played dress-up, and debated who had the best homeroom at Wellfleet Elementary School, or whose house to hang out at after school.

    Now, those kids are 26- and 27-year-old women. And they’ve traded Wellfleet for Medford, where they share an apartment. They still play dress-up sometimes — they’ve turned an extra bedroom into a sewing-machine craft space. And they still argue.

    Living in a pod provides relief from isolation. Together in their Medford apartment, seated left to right, are Emer Valdez, Leah Puffer, and Hanna Morse. Charlotte Goldberg is in front.

    “But we have adult fights,” said Puffer.

    “About watering the plants, what rug we’re going to put in the living room, how to organize the craft room,” added Morse.

    “And,” interrupted Goldberg, “when to turn on the heat!”

    This year has introduced a slew of new terms into our collective vocabulary — “social distancing,” “superspreader,” and “pod” among them. A pod (or a “bubble”) unites a group under one roof where they can interact maskless because they’ve agreed to follow strict rules that limit their exposure to others. Pods have provided relief from isolation, especially for young people unburdened by spouses, children, and careers.

    Which is precisely how to describe Morse, Valdez, Goldberg, and Puffer. All born and raised in Wellfleet, the four graduated from Nauset High School, then went their separate ways, seeking jobs and education off Cape.

    The beginning of 2020 saw the four friends in constant touch, but decidedly spread out. Puffer and Goldberg lived together in Brooklyn, Puffer working as a per-diem psychiatric nurse, and Goldberg as a fashion merchandiser. Morse was working for Lower Cape TV in Wellfleet. Valdez was in London, pursuing a master’s degree and living with housemates she didn’t really know.

    Then, the pandemic struck. The world was shuttered, and, one by one, said Puffer, although the friends were in different places, doing different things, each realized she was eager for a change. The bottom line, said Morse, was this: they were “lifelong friends, in similar situations in life.” Covid gave them an opportunity to regroup, reassess, and reset.

    Plus, the women realized something that most Americans didn’t, when it came to Covid. “We felt like the pandemic was going to go on for a long time,” said Goldberg. “It made sense to be in the same place to help each other out and get through it together.”

    They found a perfect blend of urban and rural (and, added Morse, “cheaper than South Boston”) in Medford. In September, the four signed a 12-month lease on a five-bedroom apartment in the top half of an early 20th-century townhouse.

    And, just like that, said Puffer, the four became a pod. “It’s a cliché, but the universe did its thing, and it all fell together,” she said.

    What does it mean to be a pod on a day-to-day level? That’s a little more complicated.

    Pulling off a successful pod requires laying down some serious protocols. The women have friends nearby, but have all agreed not to visit anyone in their homes. Bars in Medford are open, but the friends don’t let themselves go. They eat only at restaurants that offer outdoor dining.

    And dating? That’s a whole other can of worms. Puffer and Goldberg have significant others living in New York City; they get tested before seeing one another. Morse and Emer say the dating game is pretty bleak. “It’s not a great time to be meeting brand new people,” said Morse. “We’re still trying to figure out how to date responsibly during a pandemic.”

    According to the pod, the public outlook on Covid safety feels stricter in Medford than on the Cape. Except at bars, “the amount of mask-wearing and distancing is usually at 100 percent,” Morse said. “It may be due to the larger population and higher cases, but people police each other a lot more.”

    While unemployment remains a major issue as the pandemic stretches on, the four have found some luck living outside of Boston. Puffer is still a nurse, doing mostly from-home telehealth. Goldberg makes jewelry for an Allston-based Etsy company, and Morse just started an office job at Granite, a Quincy telecommunications firm. With her studies completed remotely, Valdez is now searching for a job in the museum sector, which she admits “isn’t in the best shape right now.”

    Pod-mates as pre-teens at the Wellfleet Fourth of July parade, left to right: Charlotte Goldberg, Hanna Morse, Leah Puffer, and Emer Valdez. (Photos courtesy Hanna Morse)

    The women’s lease ends in September 2021. With it will end a year of togetherness that, in spite of their childhood friendships, none of them imagined for this time in their lives. Then what?

    “I would love to come back to the Cape,” said Valdez. “If I can ever afford it.”

    “In terms of putting down roots, we all definitely want to go back to the Cape,” said Goldberg. “But like most of the younger generations who grew up there, we’re afraid it’s not a reality.” The four women agree that both affordability and available housing are roadblocks for Cape kids wanting to live in their home towns.

    Reality, though, hasn’t stopped the women from spending some of their pod time dreaming. For the last few months they’ve shared meals, laughs, air particles, and ideas.

    “Our big dream is to eventually start a women’s center in Wellfleet,” said Morse. “It would be a place for all kinds of activities — workout classes, child care, shared workspace, and classes about stuff they don’t teach you in school, like personal finance, health care, and home ownership.”

    “It would be an inclusive, safe space,” added Puffer, “to enrich the lives of all types of people.”

    They know that pulling off their dream wouldn’t be easy. But it’s one that’s inspired by their experience of closeness — as kids on the Wellfleet Elementary School playground, and now, getting through the pandemic together.

    “We thought it was us against the world,” Morse said. “Two decades and a pandemic later, it still pretty much is.”

    IF I HAD A HAMMER

    Going Against the Grain Has Its Rewards

    How three Outer Cape women found their strengths in construction

    By

    With Women’s Week in view, the Independent asked three Outer Cape women to tell us what it’s like to make themselves at home working in what is still seen as a man’s world — the building trades.

    Jean Marino, Master Tiler

    “It is true that, as a woman in the trades, I have had to prove myself more than a man would have to,” says Jean Marino, a master tiler who runs her own tiling and marble business in Provincetown. To make it, she said, “you have to be very good, very serious at what you do.”

    Marino studied sociology. She was a medical social worker in a Boston nursing home when she came to Provincetown for an October weekend that ended up changing her direction for good.  “I met someone,” Marino says.

    Jean Marino has been running her own tile and marble business from Provincetown for over 30 years. (Photo courtesy Jean Marino)

    Already unhappy with the health-care system, Marino decided to stay here. So, she did what most newcomers do — she found work at Christy’s, where, she says, she “was a terrible waitress.” It was there that a local carpenter offered her an out. For $8 an hour, she could learn carpentry on the job, he told her.

    “That sounded like pretty good money in 1984,” Marino laughs. “I said yes.”

    Marino bought her own hammer and a tool belt and soon found herself shingling a roof with views of Provincetown harbor. “It was very romantic working on the water,” she says, but even though she enjoyed it, she didn’t think she’d make a career in the trades. “I thought, ‘I can do this until I figure out what I’m doing with my life.’ ”

    A hard worker, Marino kept getting construction-related jobs. The views weren’t as good on tiling jobs, but doing the work, she found she actually had an advantage over men. “Try to fit a large man into a shower stall,” she says. “And my small hands allow me to be very meticulous.”

    After apprenticing with Ted Thomas in Wellfleet, Marino opened her own business in 1989. She thinks she had it easier in Provincetown than she would have elsewhere. “I’ve put up with a lot,” she says. But it also helps to put in years. “Now I have a reputation,” Marino says. “I am known.”

    Women feel comfortable having her at work in their homes, she adds, “and men here are more open-minded.”

    Deborah Paine, Builder

    “I was one of those kids who grew up always building, sketching, and drawing houses,” says Deborah Paine. She has had her own construction and design business in Truro since 1989.

    Deborah Paine is a sought-after Truro-based custom contractor, specializing in historic restoration. (Photo courtesy Deborah Paine)

    After a brief stint in the hotel business, Paine began working as a builder on Peaks Island off the coast of Maine, where her family history goes back almost a hundred years.

    Her direction was met with skepticism from the islanders at first. But Paine stuck it out and found acceptance. “It has always been my philosophy that there is plenty of work to go around for people who do good work,” she says.

    What was harder for Paine was changing her family’s opinions. They weren’t sure her decision to go into contracting was the right one. “My parents tried to convince me that I would never make a lot of money in construction, that I should take a more conventional approach,” she says. But she went against the grain anyway.

    Once she became a builder, she says, “it took a long time for my parents to acknowledge that I really was quite good at it.”

    In 1989 Paine moved to Provincetown because she wanted to be part of a more cohesive gay community. Even here, she says, “the adage that women have to work twice as hard as men to prove themselves every day is very true.”

    At times, though, she says, being a woman has been an advantage, particularly when it comes to communicating with customers.

    Thirty years ago, when she met with couples, she says, men were often the outspoken ones. “Put a male builder in a meeting with a husband and a wife,” she says, and “the two guys are just going to work at bonding. The wife is going to be left out of the conversation. That was my experience over and over again.”

    Recognizing that dynamic helped Paine develop a good starting point for projects — “getting the conversation to be more balanced.”

    Kayla Burrell, Sophomore, Cape Cod Regional Technical High School

    When Kayla Burrell enrolled at the Tech in Harwich, she planned to specialize in culinary arts. But halfway through her first year, she got really into HVAC.

    “Although construction is in my family, I always pictured myself doing something else,” she says. “But when we rotated through all the programs offered by the school, I loved the hands-on work in the construction cluster best.”

    The teachers — all male — were very supportive, she says. In fact, it is the school’s philosophy, as stated on its website, to “strongly encourage our students to consider shop choices that are nontraditional for their gender.”

    The school’s HVAC program is the most difficult of all the shops to get into, but Burrell set her sights on it and succeeded. She feels that, while the boys have some advantages, she has others. When the students do electrical projects and pipe work, she says, “the boys do build muscle easier, but the girls are very good at paying attention to tiny details that the guys don’t notice.” In her view, “it all balances out.”

    Eastham’s shellfish warden Nicole Paine is proud of her daughter Kayla Burrell’s decision to pursue the construction shop at Cape Cod Tech. (Photo Susannah Elisabeth Fulcher)

    Burrell’s decision to take the construction track was also inspired by her mother, Nicole Paine (no relation to Deborah Paine), who is Eastham’s shellfish warden. “My mom does something not a lot of women do, and I am proud of her,” she says. “Now I am following in her footsteps, and it’s an awesome feeling.”

    The respect is mutual. “Our entire family is very proud of Kayla,” Paine says. “She chose something completely off the path she originally went to the Tech for, and she was a hundred percent correct.”

    Burrell has since become a role model to her peers. “When I chose a profession that is not traditional, my friends were surprised, at first,” she says. “Now they say that they brag about me all the time to other people. I feel like a leader, that I am showing others that if there is something you really want to do, there is nothing stopping you.”

    ALL RISE

    Wellfleet’s Abbe Seldin Made Tennis History in 1973

    She fought for gender equity with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s help

    By

    WELLFLEET — If you search for Abbe Seldin in the archives of the New York Times, you’ll find four articles.

    The first, by Leslie Oelsner, appeared on Feb. 1, 1972, when Seldin was a 15-year-old sophomore at Teaneck High School in New Jersey, just five miles from the bridge to Manhattan. “Teaneck Girl Sues to Join High School Tennis Team” was the headline.

    Seldin, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union, had filed suit in U.S. District Court to be allowed to try out for the boys team because there was no girls team. This was five months before Congress passed Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs, including school sports. Seldin’s A.C.L.U. volunteer lawyers were two young Rutgers University Law School professors, Annamay Sheppard and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

    Abbe Seldin on the court in Teaneck in 1973. (Photo courtesy Abbe Seldin)

    “I was a normal high school kid, playing tennis on my own in tournaments around the New York area,” said Seldin, now 64, last week at her home in Wellfleet. Her father, Arthur Seldin, had inspired her love of tennis. “He was a really good player,” she said. “When he came back from World War II, he won all the tournaments around metro New York. He played number one for N.Y.U., captain of the team for three years. Dad was great.”

    Abbe was not especially political at the time. She just wanted to play tennis and be part of a team. She was ranked 22nd among 15- and 16-year-olds by the Eastern Lawn Tennis Association.

    Gender discrimination in sports was a hot issue. The state officials governing interscholastic sports at the time rejected co-ed tennis because of the “substantial practical, psychological and physical reasons for separating girls and boys on the high school level in competitive sports and in tennis in particular.” The following year saw the celebrated “Battle of the Sexes,” in which Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs, a former world number-one player, who had bragged that he could beat any woman on the court. Ninety million people watched the match on TV.

    King was Abbe Seldin’s favorite player.

    “Martina and I are the same age,” Seldin said, referring to tennis star Martina Navratilova. “But I really liked Billie Jean. I didn’t care much for Margaret Court Smith. I remember the original nine in the Virginia Slims. It’s 50 years since women started the W.T.A. and had their own tour.”

    Seldin and Ginsburg never actually met, but they had many long phone conversations. In her court brief for Seldin’s case, Ginsburg argued that, in a sport like tennis, gender is “as irrelevant a factor as is race, religion, national origin, political beliefs or hair color.” The lawyers maintained that discrimination on the basis of sex violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal rights, an argument that Ginsburg would later champion successfully in a series of landmark Supreme Court cases.

    The second time Seldin appeared in the Times was on April 22, 1973, while her case was still pending. An article about the parents of young tennis stars playing in a tournament on the Upper East Side, by Charles Friedman, reported that “Mrs. Shirley Seldin, another Jerseyan, said she gets ‘choked up’ and ‘my heart misses a few beats’ when her daughter, Abbe, plays.”

    “Mother didn’t play,” said Abbe last week, “but she knew everything about tennis and could analyze it.” She also fully supported her daughter’s desire to join the boys team at Teaneck High, as did the school’s tennis coach, Arthur Christensen.

    Two months after that mention, Abbe was in the Times again, in Parton Keese’s “People in Sports” column on June 28, 1973.

    Keese reported that Judge Leonard Garth, who was presiding over the case, had offered to referee a match between Abbe, who was now 16, and three top male players on the school team. Garth was an avid tennis player. “I’ll do anything to dispose of this case,” he told the Times. “I’ll take her on myself if I have to.”

    Before that could happen, the case was settled out of court in Seldin’s favor. She tried out for the team and made it. But by then, the supportive Coach Christensen had left, and the football coach was put in charge of tennis.

    “He ran it like a football team,” Seldin said. “Basically, he had a really bad attitude towards me. We started practices and he had us do football drills. You had to climb stairs using your arms and somebody would hold your legs, to build up your upper body strength. I made it to the top of the stairs and then the guy dropped me. I fell down the stairs on my chest and front and had the wind knocked out of me. And I just left. I went home to my mom and I said, ‘It’s not for me. We gave it our best shot.’ And my parents said that was absolutely fine.”

    She went back to working with private coaches and playing at the Stadium Tennis Club in Harlem, then went on to play tennis at Syracuse University. She is not bitter about what happened in 1973.

    “The important thing to remember is this was the cusp, the beginning of Title IX, which was huge,” Seldin said. “I was able to benefit the very first year, when I went to Syracuse. I went to the chancellor of the university and the director of women’s sports and said there needs to be athletic scholarships for women.” She was one of the first women at Syracuse to get one.

    Seldin still plays tennis two or three times a week, at Oliver’s Clay Courts in Wellfleet and at Willy’s in Eastham.

    In Wellfleet, Abbe Seldin plays for fun. Playing in high school in the ’70s, on “the cusp of Title IX,” was another story. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    “I’m very proud to say I have two brand-new titanium knees and they’re excellent,” she said. “I’m just running like a kid. To be able to run again, to move side to side — it’s a miracle.”

    Her fourth appearance in the Times was last week, on Sept. 28, after Justice Ginsburg’s death, in a story by Andrew Keh. That piece, and another about her in USA Today, related her painful experience on the stairs at Teaneck High.

    “When all this came out recently in those articles, I posted it on Facebook for my graduating class,” Abbe said. “All these football players and tennis players I hadn’t heard from for years wrote back about how horrible that coach was and how many of them had quit the team because of him. All the guys remember him. He abused the football players horribly. It brought me a sense of validity. I was no chicken.”

    Edward Miller is a member of the Teaneck High School Class of 1966.

    COVID & HEALTH

    Giving Birth During Crisis Adds to Risks

    Home birth isn’t for everyone and isolation is a challenge

    By

    Covid-19 is a brand-new disease with many unknowns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites a lack of data on special risks for pregnant women and infants, but with other viral respiratory infections, pregnant women have been more likely than others to suffer serious complications.

    With care providers everywhere scrambling to keep up with continually changing guidelines and concerns about overburdened hospitals, Outer Cape families are learning about the limitations of home birth options and facing the challenges of keeping supportive loved ones at a distance.

    Andrea Aldana of Eastham is expecting her first baby around July 21. She hopes to give birth at home rather than in a hospital — a choice more women are considering now than they have since the mid-20th century, when hospital birth became the norm throughout the U.S.

    Andrea Aldana and Scott Sebastian deploy their own blood-pressure cuff; their midwife has them monitor vitals and do checkups by phone. (Photo Jorge Aldana)

    “I have gotten more calls in the past two weeks than I get in a whole year,” said Nicole Cisneros Pegher, a certified professional midwife who attended her first home birth in Truro in 2016, followed by a second in Provincetown two years ago. “This is really different. There are home-birth midwives who have come out of retirement to help,” she said.

    As much as she would like to help all women now seeking her services, Pegher said, not everyone is a candidate for home birth.

    Only women with low-risk pregnancies are eligible. Preparing for home birth means out-of-pocket expenses of $4,000 to $6,000, not covered by insurance in Massachusetts. Home-birth midwives provide prenatal care throughout pregnancy, monitoring clients carefully for risks like pre-eclampsia or gestational diabetes, conditions that necessitate a hospital delivery.

    Pegher is receiving calls from women in late pregnancy who were planning a hospital delivery, but are now afraid of giving birth in facilities where Covid-19 patients are being treated.

    “There is a lot of education that needs to happen if you get a call from a woman at 35 weeks,” she explained. “There is an additional risk to that.”

    Aldana and her fiancé, Scott Sebastian, decided to hire Pegher before the extent of the Covid-19 crisis became apparent, because they were looking for a more personal and intimate birth experience. Now Aldana says she feels fortunate.

    “I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I had waited another week,” she said, “because home-birth midwives are booking out so fast right now.”

    Minimizing Exposure

    Like hospitals and other care providers, Pegher has made adjustments, including conducting all non-milestone appointments via telephone to minimize possible exposure to the virus.

    Meredith Goff, a certified nurse midwife, who on March 1 came out of retirement to offer services to patients at Outer Cape Health Services, said, “We are quite capable of giving safe care during this difficult time.” Like Pegher, Goff is carrying out most of her prenatal appointments via telephone.

    “We want to keep pregnant women safe and, for the most part, if we can keep them out of the office,” Goff said, “then it’s safer for the patient.”

    As a former home-birth midwife herself, Goff is aware of the draw of home birth at a time like this. “Women are understandably feeling reluctant to go into the hospital because of the possible risk of exposure to Covid-19,” she said. “I am very sympathetic.”

    The Independent asked officials at Cape Cod Hospital to comment on the situation. Christina Peaslee, executive director of marketing communications and content strategy, declined.

    But Goff encourages women to feel safe about giving birth at the hospital. “I am in touch with the hospitals,” she said. “I have not yet heard of any pregnant women who have tested positive, and a maternity unit is quite separate from other parts of the hospital.”

    Families and their newborns face another set of challenges: being isolated just when they need support. Women attending prenatal appointments at hospitals are leaving their partners in the parking lot to minimize possible Covid-19 transmission. Chris Milewski, a Wellfleet fisherman, will not be able to join his wife for her milestone 14-week ultrasound at Beth Israel hospital in Plymouth.

    “It’s a big appointment, so that’s hard,” Milewski said. “She really wanted me to be there for her, and to see the baby. She is pretty upset about it.”

    Nora Corrigan, a current Fine Arts Work Center fellow in Provincetown, is due to give birth to her first baby on April 26 at Cape Cod Hospital. Her husband has not been allowed to attend recent appointments either.

    “There is no one in the waiting room, no other mothers even, and all the staff wear masks,” Corrigan said.

    She hopes that her husband will be able to attend the birth. That is their plan, but they know it could change. “We’re taking our cues from the midwives and doctors at the hospital,” she said, “and it seems like things on their end are changing every day in terms of best practice and what people understand about the virus and pregnancy and newborns.”

    Alexandra Foley gave birth to her first child, a boy, at Cape Cod Hospital on March 15. She said that her husband was the only support person allowed to attend the birth, and he was told not to leave the maternity unit for the duration of their stay. Foley’s parents and in-laws were not permitted to visit their new grandson in the hospital, and more than two weeks later have still not yet met him in person.

    Foley, her husband, and baby are now at home, but remain in isolation to protect the newborn from potential exposure to Covid-19.

    “I’m sad that I can’t share our son with the people we love,” Foley said. “I can’t hug my mom or my mother-in-law, and I can’t get their support when my husband goes back to work. I’m going to have to figure it out solo, which is not what I thought it would be like.”

    Goff is concerned about the vulnerability of new families during the postpartum period: “I think about women not having easy access to their families and the support that they need with a brand-new baby,” she said.

    Liz Libby, a lactation consultant who works with women throughout the Lower Cape, agreed. She is offering assistance: a free virtual postpartum support group, as well as free online breastfeeding group meetings, through her website: risingtidewomen.com.

    “Breastfeeding is the best immune protection for a baby,” Libby added. “When parents reach out to me, often what they need most is parameters on what is normal. Do I need to worry? A lot of that we absolutely can still do, virtually. We can provide emotional support and just say, yes, this is really hard and you’re doing a great job.”

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