Having Our New York City Baby During COVID-19
When Colleen got pregnant nine months ago, we had no idea the rollercoaster we would be in for.
IT’S A GIRL!
Siena Rae Siskar was born on Wednesday, April 8th in New York City! You can find all the cute baby photos here and here!
When Colleen got pregnant nine months ago, we had no idea the rollercoaster we would be in for. The week before Siena was born, hospitals were not even allowing birth partners into the building. Luckily, Governor Cuomo signed an executive order to reverse that decision, so no women would have to labor alone. We were both incredibly relieved to know we could be together for the birth of our first child.
As part of the new policy, New York City hospitals began testing all women entering labor and delivery for COVID-19 upon arrival. We arrived at the hospital around 6:00 am. Colleen was tested via a nasal swab and I had my temperature taken. While we waited for the results, she was admitted and the rest of the morning was fairly smooth for both of us.
Then around 1:00pm, Colleen’s COVID test unfortunately came back positive, even though she was asymptomatic. I asked if I could then be tested but due to a nation wide shortage of tests, the hospital is not testing any spouses. Instead per hospital policy, they just assume that because I'm living with their patient, it means I have been exposed. As a result, I was asked to leave the hospital at that time and Colleen would have to deliver on her own. Saying goodbye and leaving was not easy emotionally, to say the least. I left the hospital in lower manhattan and took a lonely walk back home to process what had just happened, over an eerily empty Brooklyn Bridge.
I called our parents to tell them the news. Then I was FaceTimed in for the rest of the day from home. Fortunately, the hospital did allow a replacement partner as part of the Governors Executive order. A person who had not been in contact with Colleen for 14 days. Luckily Colleen’s childhood friend Talitha stepped up in very last minute and was allowed to take my place. It meant the world to both of us that Colleen wouldn’t have to deliver alone!
A few hours later I watched over a Zoom call from my laptop at home as Siena Rae was born just before midnight! We had kept the gender a surprise for the whole pregnancy and we were so excited to find out our baby was a girl!
Looking back on it, I think Colleen and I had very mild cases of COVID-19 in the middle of March. Around that time we both lost our sense of taste and smell and developed a dry cough out of nowhere. We also had a few other friends in New York City who had very mild symptoms as well. However, due to the lack of accessible testing, there was no way to know for sure at the time.
So while Colleen tested positive in the hospital the doctors are confident she was already over it, and that is why she was asymptomatic. Siena was tested for the next 2 weeks by her pediatrician and has stayed negative, which is a massive relief. Per doctors orders, we had been wearing masks at home for those first few weeks to ensure her protection.
So I missed being in person for the birth and it was an incredibly stressful day. But looking back in hindsight, I am just grateful that everyone is home and healthy now. I am confident we did what was right to protect Colleen, the baby, and the amazing hospital workers.
Looking forward there is a lot of research regarding mothers passing on antibodies to babies through breast milk. We might even join a Mt. Sinai research study to help further the research being done in this space. Our doctors hope is that Colleen will pass the antibodies to Siena and she will be protected. 🙏🏻
Presently, happy to report that everyone is healthy and we are so excited to be spending time together at home as a new family!
My wife Colleen has also published her side of the story here, which I obviously recommend reading.
The Future Is Here, And It’s Now Being Evenly Distributed
If you work in tech you have probably heard this quote over the years: “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” William Gibson - August 1993
The Oculus, New York City
If you work in tech you have probably heard this quote over the years:
“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”
William Gibson - August 1993
Having lived in New York City for most of the past decade, I have often felt like New Yorkers live in the future compared to others around the country. Fast-casual salad restaurants, seamless, electric bike shares, uber, revel, spectacles, ramen burgers, cronuts, the void VR, capsule, etc, all existed in New York City (and to be fair other tier-1 cities) before making their way out into the smaller cities, then the suburbs, and finally the rural parts of America. Normally the process of “innovation sprawl” can take years.
In the very short amount of time we have all been in this global COVID-19 pandemic, technological innovation has been sprawling faster than ever. Everyone everywhere is being forced into the future. Using and adjusting to future technology to help cope in their own ways with the virus.
Learning for Pre-K through College has moved online, those younger students who didn’t have access to a computer at home, are now getting iPads. Education departments are also working to finally solve the issue of internet access for those students who lacked access to adequate internet (about 29% of households across NYC).
Traditionally online courses are seeing an increase as well. Two years ago I taught a course on Skillshare called Productivity Today. Normally January is the most-watched month of the year for all the courses on the platform, due to the increase in new year’s resolutions. But recently, with everyone working from home, March and April’s view times are beating the record high’s of January’s past.
While most young urban professionals (yuppies as the boomers call us) used to be the core customers of food delivery apps like Seamless, Grubhub, Uber Eats, etc. Now everyone, at every age, is using them. And every restaurant that wants to stay alive has been onboarded to deliver through them, greatly increasing the supply side of these marketplaces.
The same goes for grocery delivery apps like Instacart, Amazon Prime, and local grocery chains that have white-labeled their own solutions, such as Wegmans (which is actually powered by Instacart on the backend).
“This level of online shopping was, at best, forecast to occur five years from now,” says David Bishop, a partner at grocery research consultancy Brick Meets Click. “The demand has overwhelmed the capacity of the retailers.” In 2019, Bishop reports that 6.3% of grocery-related spending was through online orders, bringing in around $29 billion in U.S. orders alone. That’s a lot of green, but it’s a fraction of the $650 billion industry. “Shopping online costs more for the retailer, and was a low priority for grocery stores,” Bishop says. “They offered it as an add-on, not a core part of their business.”
Everything flipped this March. With shelter-in-place orders across the country, online groceries are now a hot commodity. About 40% of orders come from first-time shoppers, according to Gordon Hasket Research.
- Excerpt from The Real Reason It’s So Hard to Order Groceries Online Right Now
When I don’t order online and I do really need to get something from a physical retail location, I have been using contactless Apple Pay almost every time. In the times of social distancing, no cashier wants to touch a card or money I hand them and contactless payments have also flipped to become the norm.
You have probably downloaded Zoom recently, which has exploded massively in growth.
Along with FaceTime, Houseparty, and the up & coming Clubhouse which are bringing how we “hang out” with friends and family into the future.
Slack, which is enabling companies to communicate with their employee’s during remote working from home has also seen explosive growth. From Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack:
In lieu of expensive gym memberships, at-home workouts are taking off with Fitbod, Obe Fitness, and Peloton. And most fitness instructors are replacing their employer/gym by building a direct to consumer relationship, and teaching classes over Zoom or Instagram.
I’m not going to even touch on the changes happening in healthcare, because that could be its own post in and of itself.
We were headed toward a future at the end of 2019. A future that was likely inevitable but still 5-10 years away.
Now in 2020, this coronavirus is global and it’s accelerating the support for new technologies all around the entire world, all at once. The future is now being more evenly distributed than ever before. And when that happens, this fast, you not only arrive at the expected future sooner than later, but you pave a new foundation. Allowing the “next wave” of technology to build on top.
Tomorrowland