New data has suggested that babies that were born during the first lockdown have not been reaching milestone targets compared to those who were born before the Covid pandemic.
During the year 2020, the Central Statistics Office recorded 55,959 births in Ireland. However, at this time, many activities that mothers and babies usually enjoy participating in, such as family visits and toddler groups, could not take place due to the strict lockdown restrictions.
As a result of these restrictions, experts are now concerned that babies born in 2020 have missed out on a huge amount of social development.
A group of paediatric doctors from the Royal College of Surgeons have recently published findings which suggest that lockdown babies have been much slower when it comes to reaching those all-important milestones.
The study was conducted with the families of 309 babies who were born between March and May 2020. Once the babies reached the 12-months-old mark, their parents were asked to make a note of their child’s ability to fulfil 9 different milestones, from saying at least one word clearly to picking up an object.
The group’s findings concluded that although the differences in lockdown babies’ developments were not a major cause for concern, they are still significant enough to warrant attention. For example, only 77% of the babies that were studied were able to say a complete word, compared to 89% in babies born before 2020.
However, the pandemic babies have excelled in mastering crawling, with 97.5% of them being able to do so compared to 91% of babies born before lockdown began. Experts believe that this could be due to the fact that the 2020 babies spent more time at home on the floor, rather than outside in prams or cars.
Dr Susan Byrne explains that the logic behind these findings is very understandable. “During the first six months, the families [we studied] were in contact with only four other people outside the family unit, on average, and by the time they reached 12 months, one in four of the babies hadn’t met another child their own age,” she noted.
Dr Byrne insists that babies born during lockdown will eventually catch up with their peers - it may just take them more time to do so. “Babies are resilient and inquisitive by nature, and it is very likely that with societal re-emergence and increase in social circles that their social communication skills will improve,” she said.
