"I'm excited and very happy, but I think a lot about the future and sometimes I think he'll be alone or that when I retire he'll be 16," admits Carmen Martín, who is playing with little Mati on the floor of their dining room. She is 48 years old and he is a year and a half old. When she met her current partner, they were both in their forties, and she already knew she wasn't going to be a mother, that the time had passed. But he really wanted to, he convinced her, and they went to a fertility clinic to see what options they had. "If we want to be parents, we have to be now," she recalls, referring to the urgency and excitement of that moment. At the center, they underwent a study that revealed that Carmen would no longer be able to have children with her own eggs; she needed those of a donor to have a better chance of getting pregnant. The surprise came when she succeeded on the first try, which is very difficult, since it usually takes several attempts.

"I have to exercise, I have to swim, I have to do yoga or meditation, I have to get some sun, but not too much," says Ana, 37, who is seven months pregnant. "When you think you've done enough, you should start with perineal massage and also with the Pilates ball and, if possible, do manteo [pelvic massage with a scarf]." She has heard that there were many things she could do to ensure that the pregnancy and birth went well in a preparation that "never ends" and that "becomes an imperative demand," fueled by the feeling that she couldn't risk the pregnancy because she might not have more opportunities.

Deaths among women during pregnancy or childbirth have fallen by 40% over the past century, but the numbers are still staggering. In 2023, 260,000 women lost their lives worldwide during pregnancy, childbirth, or the immediate postpartum period. That's one maternal death every two minutes on average, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which fears the numbers will rise again due to cuts in international health cooperation being made by various countries, led this year by the United States.

Alicia Andrés He remembers the "tension" and "fear" that were experienced in the hospital. On March 12, 2020, she gave birth to her first child, Liam. A nurse entered the room in tears and told her and her partner that no one was to touch the baby and that they should hurry home. Alicia's parents had driven from Málaga, where they live, to meet their first grandchild. The next day, they were retracing their steps to return before the roads were closed. On March 14, 2020, a state of emergency was declared due to the COVID pandemic. Gemma was separated from her daughter She was only born because she tested positive for COVID. I could only pick her up to breastfeed her. According to the restrictive protocol that was then in place and later relaxed, babies had to be separated from COVID-positive mothers, skin-to-skin contact was not allowed, they were forced to maintain a distance of two meters between the bed and the crib, and the umbilical cord was cut early. Laura gave birth alone, was strapped down during the C-section, was not allowed to hold her daughter, and found no help with the difficult breastfeeding process.

On Wednesdays, pregnant workers at the Hospital del Mar centres have an appointment with Dr Natàlia Arisa, from the Occupational Health service, who specialises in prenatal music therapy and music. They do so within the framework of the third edition of the prenatal music therapy course that the hospital service itself has been offering them for almost a year, a project of Arisa's own, which she has developed during her residency. As Dr Joana Guerrero, head of the section of the Occupational Health service at the hospital, points out, it is "a pioneering project that, despite being so necessary in a sector such as healthcare, which is so feminised, has not yet been implemented in any other hospital". Guerrero emphasises, however, that these sessions promote "moments of presence and connection, and materialise the maxim of caring for those who care, the ultimate objective of the programme".

The fifth wave of the coronavirus has not only hit young people, it has also affected pregnant women more, which is why the Department of Health has called for vaccination of this group because unvaccinated pregnant women are at greater risk of becoming seriously ill, as confirmed by data from the Hospital de la Vall d'Hebron, a reference centre for pregnant women with covid-19. Since July 1, 120 pregnant women have been admitted with coronavirus and around half, 60, have required admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), of which around thirty have had to be intubated. The number of ICU admissions during this fifth wave has already exceeded that of the previous four waves combined. "In total, in the four previous waves about fifty pregnant women were admitted to intensive care and now we have approximately sixty", explains the head of the Vall d'Hebron's obstetrics section, Anna Suy.

In the two reference hospitals in Catalonia for pregnant women with coronavirus there are 42 pregnant women admitted for covid. The data, given by Betevé, has been released the day after the Health minister, Josep Maria Argimon, appealed to pregnant women to be vaccinated. Argimon said that the benefits of acquiring antibodies to the virus are higher than the risk of complications from the vaccine or the risk of becoming seriously ill with covid if no protection to the virus is present.