Pregnancy Health

It's been a week since my home burnt to the ground in the Palisades fire. Decades of journals, my partner Maurice's artwork, yellowing recipe books passed down through generations, the kids’ bikes we bought second-hand for Christmas. A falling apart bear called Clifford. Hard drives with years of documentary filming and photography. A small drawer I'd cleared out, empty save for a tiny onesie -- our unborn baby’s first piece of clothing. I could go on, and on, and on. But it's all gone...reduced to ashes in a blazing inferno that's still raging. We're not alone, though. And the thought that we’re part of a collective trauma and experience has saved me from plummeting into a bottomless pit of self-pity and "why me?!" narrative innumerable times. Thousands have lost their homes in the Palisades and Eaton fires. Tens of thousands are still being evacuated. In a city that already had a housing crisis, this is a disaster in the truest sense. Where will we all go? On top of all of it, I'm six months pregnant. I've been terrified about the toll all of this will take on my unborn child. I've already had a terrible scare. After we finally evacuated to a friend's house in nearby La Crescenta, I noticed something wet between my legs. "Oh my god," I thought, "have my waters broken from the stress?" I rushed to the bathroom, but it was only my pants that were wet, soaked from when I'd hosed our condo down, a vain attempt to protect it from going up in flames. I forced myself to breathe and slow my heart rate down – but it was a brutal reminder that my body wasn't going through this alone. I wasn't just in flight-or-fight mode – I had to be in protect mode, too. We originally thought our home had made it. And it had, through that first night, as a neighbor had called early last Wednesday to let us know. But by the time we made it over to the Palisades (thanks to my press credentials) just a few hours later to check on it, we were greeted by a pile of rubble, still on fire. I doubled over when I saw it. The false hope, and then the visceral shock of seeing our family's home, the place we were going to raise our child, completely levelled to the ground, literally felt like a punch in the gut. Now I know what that phrase means. In this short video, the author finds her home, reduced to a pile of burning rubble. Two firefighters stood nearby, faces covered in ash -- and, I noticed, mask-free. “Is that your home?” they asked. I nodded, sobbing and clutching my bump. “We're sorry we couldn't save it,” they told me. I pulled myself together enough to tell them what an incredible job they were doing, and to thank them for somehow, saving my car – a treasured old Honda that I'd slept in during the pandemic and I was deeply attached to. I'd expected to see a charred skeleton but miraculously it was covered in ash, completely unscathed. I asked them when the condos went up. They were already on fire when they arrived two hours ago, they told me. “You must be exhausted,” I said. They just nodded. I told my partner I was going to get out of the smoke. One firefighter looked at my bump and nodded. “Yeah, you need to get out of here.” I thought about asking why he wasn’t wearing a mask, but it felt like a silly question in the moment. Nobody talks about that though, the impact all this smoke from things that really shouldn’t burn has on firefighters, particularly on women. Female firefighters experience higher rates of miscarriage than the general population. There’s a dearth of research, simply because there aren’t that many of them. They’re working in an industry with little knowledge of how their jobs could very likely impact their reproductive health. I am aware enough of the impacts of smoke that I forced myself to get back into the car. Maurice drove my car out – over downed power lines and through burning brush. A photo taken when the author went back to her Palisades neighborhood. (Credit: Lucy Sherriff) We regrouped at my friend’s house. I checked my phone – I had an email from my OB-GYN. My blood sugar levels were high, so I needed to go back for a 3-hour glucose test for gestational diabetes. I put off calling until the next day. The UCLA receptionist told me the hospital would be closing early due to the fires, and it would remain shut on Friday, too. I still haven’t been back, and that’s weighing on my mind, too. I wondered about all the other women who might be pregnant right now – or who had just given birth, and wondered how they were coping. Yes, there’s diapers and baby formula up for grabs in the donation drives, but where are they sleeping? Breastfeeding? One of my neighbor’s has a 4-month-old, and I felt immensely grateful my child was still inside me. We stayed in LA as long as we could. But the smoke kept getting worse, and even wearing a mask, I was concerned for my baby. Eventually, on Friday afternoon, we made the painful decision to leave LA and head north. We drove out of the city, the massive billowing cloud of smoke on our left, a reminder that the Palisades was still burning. We sought refuge at another friend’s house who lives in the forest on the coast – a blissful off-grid set-up that usually brings me a lot of peace. But I couldn’t relax. I hated being off-grid. I wanted to be connected to my friends, to the news, to the world. Despite the serene surroundings, my entire adrenal system was still firing on full cylinders. We would drive into the nearest town every day so we could obsessively check the containment percentage, and so I could do the numerous interviews various media had been requesting. I have been working the whole way through – it’s my coping mechanism and it’s helped me dissociate. Unhealthy I’m sure, and it'll hit hard at some point. But for now I’m just trying to survive. Eventually we packed up again, and headed further north. I have a story up in Seattle that I have to do – we need the money now more than ever – and we figured it would kill a few days. We’re waiting for the smoke to die down before we go back. We want to be a part of LA right now, part of the collective grief. We want to help others who aren’t as fortunate as us – we have our health, we have our car, and we have great friends. We want to be around our neighbors, all scattered across the city but forever bound by this fire. We’re taking it day by day, being grateful we’re still alive, and blessed by the support and generosity that both friends and strangers have shown us. We’re not thinking too far ahead, and for now that’s about all I can manage. Lucy Sherriff is a British journalist with over 10 years experience reporting on the environment, social justice and human rights. She is a regular contributor to The Story Exchange. We'll be checking back with her to see how she (and baby) are doing.

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