MNHQ here - are you having a 'lockdown' baby?

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We've been analysing some data here at MNHQ and going on what we can see, quite a few MNers (more than in comparable time periods in previous years) seem to have been talking about conception, pregnancy and BFPs in the late spring and early summer this year.

Which makes us think... is there a pandemic baby boom on the way? Are the shops about to sell out of Bugaboos? Will school admissions in 2025 be an absolutely massive scrum?

If this is you we'd love to hear about how you got your BFP (I mean you don't literally need to tell us how you got pregnant, we're mostly confident about that bit...) and what it was about lockdown or your changing personal circumstances that made you decide that this was the time to go for it.

Did you have more time at home without a commute? Did lockdown prompt you to reassess and rethink in some way? Did you have life changes (eg less paid work or the loss of a job) that prompted you to crack on with trying for a baby? If conception hadn't been an easy journey for you, do you think the quieter (if weirder) circumstances of lockdown helped?

We'd love to know what your experiences have been if you'd be happy to share them with us.

Thanks
MNHQ

We'd been TTC for our second since August last year, so decided not to stop mainly due to me being 39. I had an early MC in July but then just a month later we got another BFP and I'm now 22 weeks!

Yes... currently 30 weeks.
Surprised as I’m an nhs worker and was doing 6 12 hour shifts a week while he was at home on furlough. After 2 years trying and 1 MC!

Before lockdown I was working crazy hours with a long commute so didn't think it was the best situation for a baby, even though me and my husband both really liked the idea of starting a family at some point. So when covid happened it made us rethink our priorities and we thought we'd give it a go. Really didn't expect it to happen so quickly, after two months of trying, but here we are with a baby girl due early March. My company has had to rethink its flexible working policies which will be a huge help when I return to work after maternity leave.

There won't be a baby boom.

There are already signs that births will be lower than average next year.

On the other hand, it may not be such a bad year to have a baby. This cohort will benefit from smaller classes, easier access to first choice of school, and higher odds of getting into a preferred university in years to come.

The data from countries like Singapore which are influenced by the Chinese zodiac (which causes some parents to avoid having babies in "unlucky" years) suggests that it's better to be born in an "unlucky" year than a "lucky" one!

After 4 MMC and 5 years ttc, the one time I happened to get pregnant and the baby didn’t die in my womb just happened to be during a pandemic. It’s not a wink wink nudge nudge “lockdown baby”. I didn’t get pregnant because I was bored in lockdown. I find the term “lockdown baby” pretty fucking offensive which trivialises the realities of getting pregnant, and staying pregnant, for many women.

Well I had a lockdown miscarriage so having this pinned to the top of the app with no option to hide is pretty distressing to be honest

I'm only 6 weeks pregnant so conceived in the second lockdown? We "tried" for a while from the first lockdown but I wasn't having periods so it couldn't happen.

It's our second and all being well DD will be 2.5 when this one is born, just felt like the time to add another regardless of covid.

I know people have a much harder time but I'm a bit annoyed I couldn't get pregnant earlier because I was furloughed (though looking after DD without any groups would have been hard, sweet spot in the summer though?) and then I was made redundant so now I won't get SMP and I'm trying to hold down a new job when I'm shattered. I actually wanted to put a pin in TTC because of this but that didn't exactly work!

TTC for over 2 years, 1 chemical pregnancy, 6 months of clomid (Dec-May), countless tests. We stopped all medication and was added to the IVF waiting list at the start of July, got my BFP 2 weeks later. I don't really count this as a 'lockdown baby' due to the fact we'd all but given up on being able to conceive but for whatever reason we did.

I fell pregnant in April so due in a couple of weeks! Was a complete shock, we weren't planning on even trying till 2021! I thought getting pregnant took months & ovulation kits etc. But there ya go, one little accident & a little baby is made. I knew I had to test before my period because my Fitbit had told me it was my fertile time after it had happened. The first tests were ridiculously faint & sure enough google led us to mumsnet, where we read a poster stating that her own faint line was now sitting doing her homework!! My partner (who should be my husband by now but that's another covid story) definitely reckons working from home made me more fertile. I had a really stressful job & not having to go in there everyday probably did wonders. I also got an extra hour of sleep & was able to be really consistent with exercise because I had no commute & nothing else to be at! Our lives have changed dramatically since then, we've moved countries & therefore jobs as well & obviously expecting the new arrival. Despite a few hiccups along the way, overall, I've been way less stressed since the first lockdown. I'm not sure if that's my body's natural reaction to prevent stress reaching the baby or just a realisation there's not much I can control anymore (thanks 2020)🤷‍♀️. So yip, that's the story of my own little lockdown surprise & I'm so excited to meet him or her in a few short weeks!

My dd is pregnant with an unplanned lockdown baby. Her appointment at the sexual health clinic was cancelled due to lockdown...baby is due in February.

We had been planning for ages to start trying in March, postponed due to covid for a few months because of the uncertainty. Then decided this wasn't going away and couldn't put our lives on hold indefinitely so started trying and were very lucky to fall pregnant in the first month.

I was due to get married in March 2020 and we had always planned on starting TTC for our 2nd baby after the wedding. However, it was obviously cancelled and rearranged for September 2020 (naively we thought life would be back to normal by then!!) come July we realised life wouldn't be back to normal and I really didn't want a big age gap between by DC plus the fact it took me 16 months to conceive my LG so we decided to postpone the wedding again and go for July 2022 and start trying.
I thought I would at least be trying 6 months due to having PCOS but low and behold the first month I got a BFP in August! I do think that the pressures of life for me this year have eased massively with WFH and being less social (I have anxiety) and I have really concentrated on being fit and healthy and cutting back on toxic products so I think this could have helped me to conceive so quickly!

I was told I would never conceive naturally and so we'd started the adoption journey. In March we both had COVID and after a very scary couple of weeks recovered, found out I was pregnant and 2 weeks later miscarried. A very sad time but left us full of hope.
Working from home meant regular mealtimes, regular exercise, sleep (this has been the best) and less stress.....in turn we got our mojo back.

Fast forward and I'm 26 weeks pregnant, due March 2021.

There is definitely a baby boom happening :)

I'm due in May, although it wasn't necessarily planned, we weren't preventing it but were more in the camp of, it's not likely to happen anytime soon...
Famous last words, as August was a chaotic month of moving house, getting a puppy and then finding out we were pregnant!

I have worked full time throughout the pandemic (from home) and my partner is self employed but fortunate to not have had his hours greatly affected. Given the NHS restrictions etc its not been great timing wise, and as it's my first I'm hoping things ease off next year so I'm not as isolated, but we're both happy and looking forward to our newest adventure.

I've had 20 years of 'you'll need fertility treatment to have a baby' from doctors and a very much loved IVF miracle DS (nearly 8) and randomly found myself pregnant (and very excited) in September after deciding to stop my pill in August. (Pill was only used for 12 months to attempt to get some sort of stability to my cycles but stopped it because it just wasn't agreeing with me nor was it making cycles any more stable and I decided a year was enough time for my body to have settled into some sort of routine on it.

We’ve been TTC since October 2019 but didn’t want to stop since the pandemic started as we gradually realised it doesn’t always happen at the drop of a hat. And for two City career types the likelihood of working from home even in our kind of careers has made it much more feasible to juggle children and work and spend more time with our children rather than commuting or working at the office. We’ve taken a gamble on that and bought a place in the country in a tiny village just over an hour from London which will be an amazing place to raise kids, near enough my family that they can help with childcare, and are planning to WFH 2-3 days per week each. This just wouldn’t have been possible a year ago as our hours are long enough that a daily commute of 90 minutes would be impossible.

We're having a baby in spite of the pandemic not because of it. Didn't have time on our side to wait for it to be over otherwise I would have

My daughter's contraceptive appointment was cancelled after her 8 wk check, after her baby was born on New Years Day, due to the first lockdown.

She gave birth 4 wks ago (in the 2nd lockdown) - 7 wks early after testing positive for covid. She literally had a covid baby. The NHS want her to take part in a covid/pregnancy study because they said the premature birth was due to the virus.

We had been thinking about ttc baby 3 for a while. We have a 2yo and a 3yo. I was pretty nervous about attempting to conceive during a global pandemic. I told my sister that I thought it was a crazy time to have a baby. She said “that may be so, but it’s the only time you’ve got.” At 38 I saw her point.

It took three long years to convince baby 1 so, knowing these things don’t always go to plan anyway, we decided to see what happened...and now I’m 10 weeks pregnant. We’re absolutely thrilled... though to date this has been my worst pregnancy by far. I feel sick as a dog all the time. So I’m actually finding lockdown pretty useful as I really don’t want to see anybody anyway. Good luck to all the other mums to be x

Yes.

Trapped inside I accidentally slept (multiple times) with my flat mate.

Super excited to welcoming baby after a horrendous few years ☺️

@Coolerthanapolarbearstoenails did you slip?

I fell pregnant in July. To be honest, being pregnant isn't actually related to anything Covid/lockdown for us.

We always, from our first pregnancy, said we would like a 2-3 year age gap. We were casually chatting about and realised that we were already at the point that DD would be at least 2.5 when the baby arrives. Time didn't feel quite right but we'd agreed we would start properly in a couple of months purely because we wanted the age gap.

We had unprotected sex once, in July, in a "oh what the hell, we're going to start trying in a month or two" nothing will happen. 3 weeks later im holding a positive test.

DP was quite looking forward to a few months over regular sex so was most put out 😂 but we're having a 2.5 year gap which feels perfect!

Lockdown made no difference in actual fact it probably delayed our timescales slightly. We had been TTC for years and going through fertility treatment. We had our egg collection just days before lockdown 1 started and all the fertility clinics closed. We then had to wait until the HFEA released guidance allowing fertility clinics to open again to have our transfer some 3 months later. Feeling very lucky that it worked and now eagerly awaiting the birth of our IVF miracle baby.

@needanewnamenow if you're on the app, click on the three dots and click 'hide' x