Among the people whose lives are being turned upside down by the coronavirus are many pregnant women.

As they prepare for one of the most intense and emotional experiences of their lives, they face the possibility of delivering babies in hospitals filled with COVID-19 patients — and plans they've made for where to give birth and who will be there with them are often now in question.

That's the situation confronting Lauren and Daniel Herriges of Sarasota, Fla., whose first child, a daughter, is due April 3. For assistance during childbirth, they hired a doula, a support person who helps laboring women. The Herrigeses had planned to have their doula with them in the delivery room at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, but they recently got crushing news: To reduce the risk of coronavirus infection, the hospital is limiting delivery room visitors to just one person.

"That's a bit gut-wrenching," Lauren Herriges says, "because I like my doula and wouldn't have gotten one if I didn't think it would be very helpful."

Then came an even more startling update from the hospital: "That I should be prepared to not be permitted to have any support person at all — so no husband, which has really kind of rocked my world," Herriges says.

The prospect of going through childbirth without her husband by her side has Herriges considering an option her doctor recommends against: being induced early. That's left Herriges with a dilemma: Should she go to a different hospital with an unfamiliar doctor?

"Or do we suck it up and stick with the same practitioner I've been with for years ... but then maybe not have my husband?" Herriges says. "That's one we're still trying to figure out. And we're running out of time."

As hospitals cope with the widening coronavirus pandemic, many pregnant women are having similar debates, worrying about how the disease could affect their babies, and wondering if maternity wards may experience a shortage of beds, staff or supplies as the coronavirus spreads.

"As you can imagine, our phones are ringing off the hook from folks that have questions about coronavirus and pregnancy, and other effects of coronavirus on their health," says Dr. Jeffrey Ecker, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Because COVID-19 is so new, definitive answers are hard to get. So far, there doesn't seem to be evidence that women are more likely to contract the virus when they're pregnant, and limited research suggests that the coronavirus cannot be transmitted during childbirth or breastfeeding, although the preliminary studies are sometimes conflicting.

"The reality is we don't have a lot of data related to outcomes in pregnancy in women who have COVID-19 or their risk of contracting COVID-19," says Maureen Phipps, chief executive officer of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, "and that does put us at a disadvantage."

Pregnant women are considered an "at-risk population for COVID-19" because they're generally at higher risk from respiratory infections, so numerous hospitals nationwide are minimizing childbirth visitors and doing more prenatal visits by phone or online, as recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The organization is not advising early deliveries solely because of the coronavirus. But the M Health Fairview system in Minnesota is offering that option to some women at least 39 weeks pregnant (a full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks). Through "elective ripening of the cervix," the hospital can prepare those women to be induced before their due dates.

The purpose of that, according to Dr. Laura France, an OB/GYN at Fairview, is "to try to have women come in and be delivered and go home again before we really start to see a surge of COVID-positive women in our maternity units."

Other hospitals, including Mass General, are not offering early inductions to women concerned about COVID-19 unless they have a medical reason that justifies it. Several physicians interviewed by NPR cautioned that early inductions can fail, forcing pregnant women to have cesarean sections. Inductions can also pose health risks to babies and cause mothers to spend more time in the hospital.