Can't answer your question, however we just had one in September. The COVID hospital rules were actually kinda nice. It was just my wife and I allowed in. I didn't have worry about Mother in Law, Mom, Aunt, Father in Law etc. It wasn't a conversation or a decision that had to be made regarding who was in the room, who was in the waiting room or who was coming to visit. It was just us two that went in and us three that left.

Quote:

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the paranoia has increased 10 folds

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That's just called becoming a parent.

Our 3rd is on the way and we aren't too concerned about it. With how much the media loves to fear monger if it were a real issue you would be able to find hundreds of articles talking about how scary it is for pregnant women.

We will continue living our lives like normal human beings. Going to church, working out, seeing family, going to the store, not wearing masks, etc.

Congrats on the baby and Merry Christmas!

On mobile so not going to try to directly answer each question but will do my best to share our experience and what we learned. We found out we were pregnant with our third the first week everything shut down in Houston so got to go through the experience as the guinea pigs since no one really knew anything about COVID and pregnancy yet so I apologize in advance if anything here is dated and now known to be wrong, I've stopped researching since baby was born mid November.

As for during pregnancy the rough summary of all I read was this:
-Mother developing COVID early in pregnancy seemed to marginally increase the risk of miscarriage in the normal higher risk first trimester but that the increased risk (of true) didn't seem to carry on to later trimesters
-Research on baby getting COVID in-utero seemed to indicate that it was possible that there may be a very narrow window where if mom got COVID it could cross the placenta to baby (around 20 weeks if I recall correctly). This was based on medical histories and antibody testing at birth. I don't remember the details nor do I have the qualifications to understand them but the summary conclusion was basically that the researcher had a theoretical mechanism for how this could be happening and a small set of data suggesting that it could be occasionally happening but was far from definitive. I read this paper late summer so could be dated now.
-no evidence suggesting any form of birth defects existed last I looked.
-for mom, prevailing evidence suggested COVID was much like any other respiratory virus with pregnancy. Essentially due to pregnancy effects on immune system, mom is more likely to catch it and to have a more severe case than her non pregnant peers. It wasn't double or anything but was a statistically significant difference.

As for hospital policies and experience, this one is going to vary wildly depending on where you deliver. At one point this summer, women's had opened up to allowing 2 support people and not recommending infant separation from a COVID+ mom while at the same time Memorial Herman was covid testing all moms and presuming them positive until a negative test. This mattered because based on what we were told, for COVID+ mom no support people allowed in room and they were strongly pushing for newborn separation. Things changed a lot and at the time we delivered at memorial Herman mom still got tested but the only difference for a + mom was less medical staff time in the room and full ppe when they did. Also the week we delivered they started allowing doulas in as well. The weird thing was despite all their strictness, at no point was a COVID test required of me or the doula. For recovery, no visitors but the one support person were allowed (which was actually nice) but I could go down to the drive way and get food deliveries and such if I wanted, but I heard they stopped allowing this in December. There was a point where if I left the recovery floor I wouldn't be allowed back in and it sounds like they are moving back that way with cases rising. All that was our experience but also since it's so variable and ever changing I would say talk to you OB frequently as they are in the hospital you will be at daily and can help you have proper plans and expectations. If that fails you can also just call up the labor and delivery group and talk to one of the lead nurses to get what the current policies are but I wouldn't worry about that too far out since so many policies are changing so frequently.

Hopefully this is helpful, and sorry for the novel, just wanted to capture everything we learned and experiences. FWIW, we think my wife and I had COVID (unconfirmed) the 2nd and 3rd weeks of lockdown in March (1st tri) and other than shortness of breath and fatigue that lingered for both of us through the end of summer, all including newborn are perfectly healthy. So take that anecdote for whatever it's worth.

Said a prayer for protection for your wife and baby
Wishing you all the best

my daughter had Covid at 24 weeks gestation in a high risk pregnancy (twins). At that time little was known so I called a contact at Harvard doing research. Bottom line is no known effect on the fetus. The Mother is at higher risk of complications. My daughter delivered 12/21 with healthy babies and no immediate complications.