The world changed for all of us when we were suddenly plunged into a pandemic in 2020. COVID sent us into a series of lockdowns in an effort to contain the spread of the virus until a vaccine could be developed.
Most of us knew that a vaccine would be the key to our lives after the pandemic. But what about those of us who knew nothing about the world before COVID?
Our research group wanted to understand what life was like for babies born during the pandemic, and what this could mean for their overall health and development.
In our last paperwe found that, with the exception of communication, these pandemic babies at age two were very similar in behavior and development to babies born before the pandemic.
We followed families of babies born in Ireland in the first three months of the pandemic, between March and May 2020. A total of 354 families and their babies visited us at six, 12 and 24 months old.
The visits, especially the earlier ones, were sometimes the only outings the families took away from home. We were struck by some infants’ suspicion of our experienced pediatric staff, which was often explained by parental comments such as, “She hasn’t been out much.”
At each visit, we asked the parents a lot of information about their babies’ lives and development through questionnaires.
Usually in a study like this, it’s best to compare the babies to a control group of other babies born at the same time, but without the same challenges. Since most of the world was in lockdown, we did the next best thing.
We compared the lockdown babies to a similar group of babies born in Ireland before the pandemic. This is a limitation of our study, but comparable groups of infants were not available at the same time.
Social life and development
We found out that these had lockdown babies small social circles. Due to COVID restrictions, activities such as parent and baby groups were canceled and there were no visits to other homes.
At six months, on average, only three people had kissed the babies, including their parents — suggesting they hadn’t met many relatives or family friends. One in four babies had not met another child their own age by their first birthday.
We also asked parents what it felt like to raise a baby during the pandemic. Words like ‘lonely’, ‘isolating’ and ‘challenging’ cropped up repeatedly. Some positive themes also emerged, including the parental bond with the new baby and more family time due to the lockdown restrictions.
We looked at ten developmental milestones on the baby’s first birthday. Among them, fewer pandemic babies had said their first word, could point or wave “goodbye,” and slightly more babies could crawl.
This makes sense when you think about it. Babies probably heard fewer words since they went outside less. Also, the pandemic babies were probably very familiar with their homes, so there were few new things to refer to.
And since the parents worked from home and visitors generally didn’t come to the house, learning to say goodbye may have been less necessary.
It’s possible that more pandemic babies crawled because they likely spent more time at home exploring.
Bee age two, we were interested to see if these developmental differences had shifted. We asked parents questions about communication at this point, including whether the child could say two or three words at once to convey an idea, whether they could correctly point to something when asked (e.g., point to the ball), and if they could follow the message. a simple command (e.g. put the toy on the table).
The children born again during the pandemic scored slightly lower in the communication portion of the questionnaire, even after we adjusted for factors such as the mother’s education level and the age of the child when the questionnaire was completed.
But it’s reassuring that the pandemic babies had similar scores to those born before COVID on the other developmental areas we looked at, including motor skills and problem solving.
We were also relieved that there were no differences in reported behavior between babies born during a pandemic and those born earlier.
We asked parents nearly 100 questions about their child’s behavior, including sleep problems, anxious behavior, how emotionally reactive they were, and whether they were socially withdrawn.
What can we do?
research groups other countries have also shown that babies born shortly before or during the pandemic slightly lower developmental scores.
Now that pandemic measures are gone, it is very important for all babies born during the pandemic to explore the exciting world.
Families should meet relatives and friends to expose their babies to a wider range of people, and babies should meet their peers at playgroups. We know that too talk to babies and reading to small children very favorable.
All babies must undergo developmental screening, which is often offered by national programs. If families have particular concerns, it is important that they contact their healthcare provider to discuss the child’s development in more detail. As a result, early and targeted support can be offered to children with specific developmental problems.
Susan ByrneAssociate Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Future Neuro, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences And Jonathan HourihaneHead of Pediatrics, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences
This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.