**3. Results**

This research revealed that public health orders due to COVID-19 pandemic created situations where the majority of parents had to negotiate complex family relationships that were often expressed as a duality between positive (blessings) and negative (curses) experiences. The period of isolation during COVID-19 was seen as both emotionally stressful and emotionally rewarding for many of the participants. Most participants responded with personal examples of the complexity of experiences, their comments discussing what they enjoyed during the postpartum period, while also moving on to discuss the tensions and stresses of their experiences.

The nature of qualitative analysis is often complex and not easily separated into distinct sections. As such, we present in this section not only the results but also the analysis of the associated social discourses. The first Section 3.1 examines the construction of positive experiences/ "blessings" through discourses and the second Section 3.2 examines the construction of challenges/ "curses" through discourses. Participants' quotes are used throughout to represent the discursive considerations.
