For months, Meg Fitzgerald has been preparing to have a vaginal birth after Cesarean section, or VBAC.

So the 34-year-old Connecticut-based mom, who is expecting her third child, hired the doula shed worked with during her second birth. Fitzgerald said the doula helped her maintain her sense of calm and perspective, even as it became clear she was not going to have the vaginal delivery she hoped for.

Now, with 14 weeks to go in her third pregnancy, Fitzgerald longs more than ever to have that kind of support not necessarily just so she can have the birth experience shes dreamt of. She wants someone who can help her manage the stress of delivering a child during a global pandemic.

My goodness, I feel like I need her, said Fitzgerald, who was quick to add that the health needs of her baby, her health care providers, and her community must come first. How likely will the VBAC be if I dont have her physically in the room? ... What will the hospital even be like at that point?

I think I am calm, overall, about all of this, she continued. Then I visit panic.

Fitzgerald is not alone. As COVID-19 continues to spread through all 50 states, pregnant women are finding themselves navigating very different pregnancies, and facing very different births, than what they envisioned just weeks earlier.

Many hospitals have now instituted policies allowing only one support person during labor, so doulas trained professionals who provide emotional, physical, and educational support to women before, during, and after birth can no longer be in the room. In places like New York City, now an epicenter of the pandemic, even stricter rules are being set. Women who deliver at any of the NewYork-Presbyterian hospitals, for example, recently were informed they cannot have their partners with them.

Were just in this very unknown, unprecedented time for all of us, Rachel Goldstein, owner of the New York-based Astoria Doula Collective , told HuffPost. How do we still support our clients? And how do we take care of our own health and our own families?