Deaf Illinois couple gives birth to twin boys during Covid-19
THE DAILY MOTH:
Deaf married couple Corey and Jennifer Axelrod, who live in Illinois, gave birth to twin baby boys on April 1st right in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
The family was featured in the “Daily Herald,” a newspaper in suburban Chicago. They descried barriers and frustrations they faced during Covid-19. I reached out to them to ask them to describe what they experienced at the hospital. They sent a video and the first topic they covered was on interpreters.
COREY AXELROD:
We already met with the hospital interpreter coordinator three months prior to discuss our whole plan. When the pandemic started, it shifted many things. We had a list of our preferred interpreters and shared it with the hospital. We ended up having to eliminate some of them because we knew they were working in the public. For example one of them was interpreting for the governor. We removed the person because they were in the public. We had to protect ourselves and our family. There were many things that were impacted.
JENNY AXELROD:
We constantly reached out to the hospital and the doctor to make sure their policy on bringing an in-person interpreter remained the same. They said we were permitted to have one during the birth. They did warn us that the policy could change because of coronavirus so I called them every day to make sure. We ended up having an in-person interpreter during the birth.
COREY:
What a huge relief.
THE DAILY MOTH:
That’s an interesting “Deaf problem” or a Deaf Bing to have — to have an interpreter on your short list and then see that person on TV interpreting for the governor and then cross that person off. Only deaf people will experience that.
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The second topic is on face masks.
JENNY:
Jenny: Face masks were a constant thing. While I was holding one of my babies, I went against the rules and pulled down my mask so my baby could see my face and know it was Mom holding him. I wanted him to be able to see who I am without a mask covering my face.
COREY:
Many people talk about how face masks are a huge issue. Yes it is a challenge. But it’s not really just about lipreading. It’s for everything. Facial expressions… I can’t tell if doctors are frowning or smiling.
JENNY:
Are they concerned? Is it good news or bad news? They won’t use pen and paper in the NICU because the pens are touched by many people.
COREY:
There was a SLP Speech and Language Pathologist that was focused on breastfeeding both boys. The person had a sister who is deaf. That was cool.
JENNY:
The person could sign.
COREY:
We were talking about concerns about face masks. I talked about the various challenges. The person reached out to others and they made clear face masks. It was nice, I could see more, but not everything. It was still a nice improvement from what they originally had.
THE DAILY MOTH:
Nice to see that the person who could sign helped to arrange see-through masks. It’s nice of the hospital to do that. The next topic is on video remote interpreting (VRI). The boys were born premature so they were admitted in the NICU in different rooms. The family had to be split up for a while. For that part of the stay VRI was provided. They will describe what that was like.
COREY:
When I was on VRI, I was also on FaceTime with her. I used the phone to film the VRI and the interpreter asked me why I was recording. I said that my wife was on FT. I had to show the phone to remove doubts. There were a lot of misunderstandings. One time when I was on VRI, the interpreter said they needed various pieces of information. I asked them to hold it until after the meeting because the doctor was making their rounds and only had a short frame of time. I told the interpreter to just hold it. There was another situation where I had to take full control of the VRI device. I just pulled it there because the hospital staff were set in their ways. They said the battery might die and I said this means you need to train your whole staff to recharge your iPads for the VRI.
JENNY:
On the topic of VRIs — when we had our in-person interpreter, they could take the time to check to get the right spelling of certain medical terms. But the VRI interpreter seemed to not have a strong medical background and when the doctor was making their quick rounds, I had a good rapport with the doctor but there was a lot of terminology that the VRI said they didn’t know how to fingerspell. I said no, what was the word? Because we already talked about that in the prior days so I already knew about it but the VRI couldn’t spell it and it was just unacceptable to me.
THE DAILY MOTH:
We can see that it is awkward to deal with a VRI interpreter on a device, but deaf people are problem solvers. We can self-advocate through it. The family has since gone home and said the baby boys recovered quickly at home. But family and friends were not able to come and visit because of the pandemic. They will explain.
COREY:
We couldn’t have any family or friends visit us at the hospital at all. Even once we arrived home with the babies, Ryder and Jordan, our family and friends could only see the babies through the window. I was at the front door, showing off the babies to our family and friends. But they weren’t even able to hold the babies or talk with them. That was tough!
JENNY:
Another challenge is that we’re both new parents with two babies and no one could come over for any support. Typically, you have your own parents come over and help or your friends come over and help but we couldn’t even have that. That was really tough on us.
COREY:
We didn’t really get to experience much at all.
THE DAILY MOTH:
The boys’ names are Ryder and Jordan.
They boys will always have a good story and they can say that they were born on April 1st in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic and that it’s not an April Fool’s joke!
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20200502/deaf-parents-navigate-birth-of-twins-during-pandemic