Effects of COVID on babies born in lockdown year

[PlantDoctor]

Just been reading this BBC article about kids starting school who were born during lockdown.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39kry9j3rno

DD was born just before lockdown so luckily was able to meet grandparents etc. before the first lockdown, but thinking back it was such an isolating time. I remember being grateful she was only tiny and didn't understand she was missing out, but obviously now we can see the effects of babies not socialising with others. It says 1/3 of this cohort have additional speech and language needs, and I know DD's preschool teacher said theirs was a particularly difficult year.

Crazy times.

It's all too convincing. But I also think that the amount of time many parents spend on phones, without direct eye contact with their young kids is awful for speech development. And sometimes that's because they're half-working, sometimes they just don't get how speech and social skills develop.

I remember PPD. I somehow survived it twice.

No mother and baby groups sounds like absolute hell.

That's what made me really angry about the whole lockdown for everybody regardless of differentiation in risk. You just knew there would unquantified suffering in ways not given enough weight at the time.

The government had scientists and likely psychologists (how best to encourage group compliance) advising them. I wonder now about the subject diversity of those scientists. Where there enough of them? Were there social psychologists, child development, paediatricians also advising?

@PlantDoctor are you aware of any similar studies for older kids? It all makes very interesting reading.

I had a baby at the height of the first lockdown. It was super surreal and I think my own anxiety did have an impact on her. I'm sure I read that the brain makes the most connections in the first year of life and most of that year was spent locked away in our houses. I mean we were only allowed a support bubble in November. Most meet ups were outside and when we did meet inside I was still a bit nervous which I'm sure my baby picked up on. Her confidence with others has grown but I've had to put a lot of work in. I guess we won't know what these children would have been like in a normal year though.

I had my first in lockdown, and my second in 2022. In hindsight, the biggest impact was on me rather than the baby. I got severe PPD and PPA, and felt extremely isolated and was terrified of letting family meet the baby.

She's now 4 and off to school next week, and seems well adjusted and meets expectations in terms of development etc. I know other kids were not as lucky though, and I know a few with language delays and extreme separation anxiety.

💐

You did good.

All you pandemic mothers are amazing. I just really don't know how you all managed it. I hope there is some acknowledgement given to how much you all sacrificed and contributed to the country one day.

Agreed we daren't touch our gd.
Luckily her parents weren't brain washed and other relatives gave cuddles- it was very ott looking back.

www.healthprecinct.org.nz/news/stories/how-research-is-helping-our-children-after-the-earthquakes/#:~:text=So%20these%20children's%20bodies%20are,calmer%2C%20everyone%20can%20learn%20better.

This is research findings post 2011 earthquake in NZ and impact on children, many had PTSD including those who were babies etc.

I think what is overlooked is how perceptive kids and babies are in sensing parental stress and anxiety.

The younger a child the more it will impact on their neurological development.

Good news - our neuro system is plastic it can be influenced and changed so long as we provide what the kids need. I think we are missing the link that all the kids (and adults) need help to deal with the anxiety that they experienced during that time rather than just more hours in class playing catch up on the academics.

Every child from conception up will have been impacted to some extent.

My DD was born late summer 2020, on the day our area went back into local lockdown and pretty much stayed there from then on. We did bubble with the grandparents by autumn/ winter whenever that was allowed.

I had PND/PNA, but it was mostly centred around my inability to breastfeed - I was obsessed. You could argue that was pandemic related due to 1) traumatic birth in part contributed to by protocols in place in the hospital and how incredibly short staffed they were (I was left too long and got sepsis is one part of it, but there’s more) and 2) complete lack of feeding support in the hospital and nothing running once I eventually got home. I was one of the lucky ones that got midwife visits when home though, I found a PND support group that was running via WhatsApp mostly and eventually socially distanced meet ups as and when possible depending on what the restrictions said that week! I also did find a baby group that ran in separate groups of 6, masks on and all sat in opposite corners of a huge hall! That was a very weird way of doing it, and again it would have to stop and start according to what the latest rules were, but it was something and I made some really good, lasting friendships where we all feel bonded by the insanity of that time.

DD was the clingiest baby ever, but is a super sociable, chatty and confident 4 year old now and very ready for school. I don’t think she was massively affected, I hope not. At the time I thought I was incredibly hard done to having a newborn through lockdowns, but having since experienced DD as a 2,3 and 4 year old I realise how much bloody harder it would have been at those ages. She does not stop ever, takes a lot of entertaining and is so much easier to manage out of the house - I’m really not sure how I would have coped!

No but I'm sure there would be. I can't imagine how difficult it was with young kids who were old enough to want to see friends but not really old enough to understand the lockdowns. Or even tweens and teens missing out on so much.

Someone answered this above. People recovering from birth for a week or two is different to months with no support or contact with family and friends, or even baby groups. The study is aiming to look at the effects on kids who were babies at the time, so we don't know the answer yet, but I think babies not being able to see normal interactions for a very long time (think masks etc. even when life did resume) could well have affected them. Certainly seems to when we see in the article that there's a huge rise in kids with speech delays etc.

Edit: typo

I don’t think Ds has been affected at all. He was born during first Lockdown 2020. Dh wasn’t allowed to stay at the hospital either.

We live overseas so had a lot stricter restrictions and so were effectively in lockdown or only allowed to places with covid passes on phone until May 2021. So a full year of no contact with anyone really. He also didn’t meet any family until summer 2021 due to travel restrictions.

He’s now a super sociable, talkative 4 year old (he’s bilingual ). He’s at nursery ( until 6 so not starting school yet), but is started to read, count, talks non stop, was toilet trained by 2.

I think the reverse happened on that he actually had way more of dh and i attention that first year. We couldn’t go out and leave him, dh had no overseas meetings so spent whole year working from home on reduced timetable, most non essential shops closed all 2020 so no shopping bar food. So Ds had us with him 24/7. Spent a lot of time walking in the woods or outside, gardening, diy. Lots of time reading to him.

of his nursery friends many were born similar time, and they all seem like regular 4 year olds.

I think when you're at the point of running out of ventilators and shrouds, there isn't time to consult child psychologists and the like.

There are problems as a result of lockdown and there's no point pretending there isn't, that doesn't mean the decisions taken were wrong.

DD was just about to turn 2 at the start of lockdown, so luckily we had a good start to the early years with lots of baby groups, stay and play, soft play, massage and swimming classes, baby signing and visits to museums and theatres. All of those helped her social and language development so much so I can only imagine how babies would have missed out to not have that available. It was always obvious to me that language and social development would suffer especially in babies and toddlers especially if families stayed indoors for days on end.

I didn't get anything useful from health visitors or the midwife visits so I wouldn't have missed out there. She never needed to see any medical staff beyond the routine appointments, which were all just ticking boxes.

I was very keen for my dd to not miss out on development opportunities so I went for long walks during lockdown, exploring all the green spaces across London, which was actually quite fun and she was happy to climb trees and collect leaves rather than be in playgrounds. Then I enrolled her in a nursery as soon as they opened up to non keyworkers after a few months, so she was able to get play opportunities and social interaction throughout the rest of 2020 and all the winter lockdowns. We went back to toddler classes and visiting places like museums when they opened up in the summer, but then some of them had to shut again, but it was OK as we still had nursery days. We went on holidays in summer 2020 and 2021 although just within the UK, but she loved those too.

She started reception in 2022 and she is doing really well at school. I think making sure she had lots of chances to explore the world and have social interactions was key to allowing her to thrive in spite of the lockdowns.

Exactly @Caspianberg Lots of children will have thrived rather than suffered. There seems to be a lot of blaming Covid for things that parents should be teaching their children as standard, potty training being one of these. It’s ridiculous for neurotypical children to be starting school in nappies and Covid certainly isn’t the reason for this!

When mine were little and ds has SALT due to glue ear, I was told that the most important thing for speech was at home, and what the parents said to them.

Something very noticeable in schools is the number of 5 year olds (or 4.5yr olds) starting school in nappies, the huge rise in speech, language and general communication difficulties and an inability to self regulate. It’s seeming that the Isolation had an understandably massive impact on those parents and children and the results are quite shocking. A lot of intervention is needed in the next 10 years.

Yeah it's not surprising for this age group. Like I said I had one that age and it was, frankly, a fucking trainwreck. Both of us working FT with no childcare. Fortunately we could flex our hours around each other, had no other DC at home to home school, and nursery reopened after three months. We were dead on our feet but she was ok. Not every family was so lucky though and it's no wonder children at such an important age suffered.

I agree but I'm not sure that this can be explained simply by lockdowns and COVID. We've seen a huge increase in children starting school without being potty-trained and limited or delayed speech but this has been a growing problem for the last ten years I'd say.

I think this is a valuable study but I'd be much more interested to know why there is such a huge increase in children with SEN and considerable additional needs in mainstream across the country (even taking into account the lack of specialist provision and disastrous funding cuts in recent times). That's an issue that urgently needs resourcing and support.

That isn't the point of the study, which is focussed on speech and language.

I don't know if potty training and COVID are linked. It seems that this has been a problem for several years?

I'm curious about this, and it may be a stupid question but I think parents need to be told what is expected at what age, and that as the parents they need to ensure those milestones are met. Some parents aren't proactive and some are probably just thick or lazy, and I do think as many children are in nursery for long hours at a young age, they assume someone else will be teaching them.

Alot of what you say here resonates with me. I've tried to block it out

I am confident that my lockdown baby was unaffected. He was my third and developmentally he was leaps and bounds ahead of my older two. Walking at 10 months and talking was off the scale. I remember his two year check and the HV said, "well I don't need to ask you about that". (And he's never stopped!). He's the most 'on' child I've ever known. I would hand on heart say he thrived, as he should - he had a lot of undivided attention!

As many of the "covid babies" had the advantage of parents off work for an extended time, surely it balances out, and quite frankly, group activities for under 2's are more about parents socialising, they barely existed when mine were tiny.

The group I think will be more affected are those already 6 now as they didn't get the normal preschool experience

I think a lot depends on what you did with your children in stimulation etc some parents couldn't do much with lack of support, having to work, cramped conditions etc how is your lo doing know?