Becoming a New Parent in a Pandemic
Becoming a new parent at any time can be a challenging, tumultuous time. However, for those who become first-time parents during the pandemic, they have faced unprecedented circumstances, and their stories need to be heard.
By Dr Emma Blakey, Dr Fiona Scott, and Dr Michelle McGillion
As new parents watching the world gradually re-open following various COVID-19 lockdowns, feelings of both relief and slow burning grief are ever more apparent.
During lockdown, many parents simply kept going, having little time to reflect and just needing to get through each day. But as things start to feel more ‘normal’, we, like many others, are only now beginning to reflect more deeply on the past year.
We are three new parents to Covid-19 babies in the curious position of experiencing for the first time personally that which we research for a living: the lives of young children and their parents.
Emma Blakey is a lecturer in Developmental Psychology at The University of Sheffield. She gave birth to her daughter a few weeks before the first lockdown. Fiona Scott is a lecturer in Digital Literacies at The University of Sheffield, focusing on the digital practices of very young children and their families. She was 30 weeks pregnant with her daughter when the UK went into its first lockdown. Michelle McGillion is an Assistant Professor in Language and Learning at the University of Warwick. Her Covid-19 baby was born in Winter 2020, after a pandemic-pregnancy.
Undoubtedly, the COVID pandemic has been difficult for many beyond those who were pregnant or first-time parents. Many suffered the tragic loss of friends and family or had to deal with severe illness in isolation with little support, whilst others faced redundancy and financial losses. However, to date, the experiences of new parents have received little attention. While no pandemic parenting experience will have been the same, and will have likely varied depending on location, levels of social support, access to resources and personal health, we think it important that these stories are documented. In writing this article, we hope firstly to highlight the extremely challenging and unprecedented circumstances that new parents faced during the pandemic so that new parents will feel seen, and perhaps less alone. Secondly, we invite new parents to share their experiences in an anonymous way, so they can be heard.
Yes, things were not all bad.
Above all, we are each extremely grateful to the health and maternity teams who went above and beyond in a time of global confusion and fear to ensure our own babies came into the world safely. In a time when so many lost so much, we are mindful that we are amongst the lucky ones, coming out of the past year’s devastation with something so longed-for.
For some, there were also unexpectedly positive things about becoming a parent during the pandemic. Some felt less pressure to host excited guests arriving in the midst of extreme exhaustion, non-stop feeding and physical recovery. With fewer visitors came the opportunity to find their own way with parenting, without well-meaning but unsolicited advice and opinions. Those working unexpectedly from home may have experienced more bonding time as a small family unit and opportunities for extended breastfeeding. For many, fear of missing out was tempered by the fact that, well, no one was out.
Lost at sea.
However, these positives can be contrasted with a range of terrible circumstances that many new parents found themselves in while pregnant, giving birth, and during the vulnerable postnatal period.
A first pregnancy inherently has many unknowns; during a pandemic first-time pregnancy these were magnified as traditional means of accessing information and support diminished or disappeared. Appointments and checks were reduced to the essential, often conducted over the phone. Pregnant people who attended scans alone to receive good and bad news. There was no opportunity to build relationships with midwifery teams, to visit hospitals or birthing centres, to attend birthing classes and gain valuable information and peer support. All this had a high emotional cost, before even considering the physiological risks that Covid-19 posed.
In the early weeks and months of the pandemic, the advice given to pregnant individuals was markedly reassuring, despite an absence of reliable data and a sound existing knowledge base that past coronaviruses had caused severe pregnancy complications. We now know that rates of stillbirth and maternal mortality increased during the pandemic, particularly in low resource and low income settings. Researchers are still trying to understand why.
Undoubtedly, pregnant individuals in low income settings (and their partners) were less likely to have the luxury of working from home and were thus more likely to be exposed to the virus. Other contributing factors are likely to include reduced healthcare provision and reduced healthcare seeking behaviours, increased emotional distress, reduction in antenatal care around the world, increases in intimate partner violence, and for some parents, increased burdens arising from the pandemic which may have affected health. For example, in some occupations, women have borne the brunt of pandemic related unemployment. The pandemic has also shed light on shocking inequalities in healthcare outcomes. Sadly, 88% of pregnant mothers who died during the pandemic were from Black or ethnic minority backgrounds.
During the worst of the pandemic, many parents giving birth were alone without their birth partners by their side and in some cases, parents were separated from their babies after birth. Healthcare providers in Europe often made these changes independently and without a firm evidence base. Research has shown these practices increased maternal distress and may have increased the incidence of traumatic births.
Once back at home, new parents often found themselves without proper health visits. These check-ins are vital, not only for monitoring physical and emotional wellbeing, but also for providing parents with practical support and reassurance. Community care was also reduced, with the cancellation of baby weigh-in clinics, which are ordinarily considered a critical measure of a new baby’s health. Furthermore, parents had little breastfeeding support, in some cases finding out months later that their baby had a tongue tie and that’s why feeding was so hard.
New parents were left behind.
Early parenthood is a time of intense emotions and vulnerability during ordinary times. The pandemic brought a significant reduction in both professional and social support. At the same time, pregnant individuals and new parents simply did not have access to reliable information upon which to make crucial decisions about their own safety and that of their babies. Of course, this was a time of great uncertainty for everyone, and policy makers were understandably focused on avoiding fatalities from COVID-19. But it is becoming ever more apparent that new parents were left behind. We worry about the long-term effects of this for parents.
Research is already showing elevated post-natal depression, with one study reporting half of new mothers experiencing clinical levels of depression and over half experiencing clinical levels of anxiety, more than double compared to a pre-pandemic sample. A great deal of public discussion has focused on young children’s development in relation to the pandemic. It’s too soon to know whether ‘Covid babies’ will be negatively impacted by their unique circumstances. While some recent work has begun to look at cognitive and social outcomes for lockdown babies, we know of no current compelling evidence that babies have been negatively impacted. Developmental psychology can also give us some useful clues. Fundamentally, young babies just need love, warmth and food. The most important social interactions babies have are with their caregivers and most pandemic babies have had this in abundance. Most babies will take the skills they learn through interaction with their caregivers and apply them to other social interactions later on. Given this, perhaps it was the unique needs of the parents we needed to pay more attention to all along. Certainly, they seem to have been largely missing from public discourse. For a baby to thrive, they need healthy parents. It’s no good just supporting the baby when the parent — who the baby relies upon — is struggling. Becoming a new parent should never be a solitary activity, and in this case new, parents have been left to navigate it alone.
Without a village.
New parents are often greeted with the platitude that it ‘takes a village’ to raise a child. Pandemic-era parents found themselves without that village. For many, the regular or occasional relief of family or friends helping out they’d imagined pre-Covid was impossible. Some, fearful of the as-yet unknown risks of Covid to new babies, went months without face-to-face contact with anyone but their baby and, if they were lucky, their partner. Days and months stretched seemingly endlessly as they got to grips with looking after a baby for the first time, alone.
Without a support network, we found it hard to unpick what becoming a new parent was like from the effects of the pandemic. Was it normal to feel so tired that we couldn’t even fathom brushing our teeth? Was it normal to feel this anxious about our children getting ill, or was the new virus raging across the world to blame? Did new parents always feel such an acute sense of their friends slipping away, or was this, too, a side effect of an unprecedented global situation, in which almost everyone had unique challenges to deal with?
Being surrounded by other parents when you are a new parent yourself can be a beautiful thing. The reassurance, support, shared stories of sleepless nights and understanding is important when you are finding yourself in this major new life situation with navigating a new parent identity. Many parents during the pandemic have not had that support and many will have felt alone, like a ship at sea riding the waves of parenthood. We know that social support as a new mother is particularly protective for mental health. Conversely, some have struggled with finding themselves at odds with other parents and, indeed, their own families, due to different perceptions of risk and different approaches to Covid distancing measures.
Someone to talk to.
As we tentatively connect for the first time with other new parents with similar experiences, a mix of relief, strain and exhaustion is apparent. Many have an obvious desire to talk and be heard. Within a few minutes of meeting a new parent, we’ve found they are revealing personal stories about their traumatic birth, mental health struggles, experiences of conflict with family and friends; or, conversely, the great bonding time they have been able to have. Like us, it’s clear they have had no one to talk to and process these experiences with. Many have been alone in processing complex, simultaneous feelings of extreme joy, gratitude, fear and stress.
It is for this reason that we invite new parents to share their anonymous stories of their pregnancy, birth and postnatal period or, before the arrival of their baby, during and after the arrival. We are keen to hear from all new parents, including those who fostered or adopted an infant during this period. We hope that this will provide the safe space for reflection that we, like others, have felt the lack of, as well as an avenue for making their voices heard.
What can we do to help new parents?
It is clear that maternity healthcare systems have been stretched and that pregnant individuals and new parents have suffered as a result of this. In line with other researchers, we ask the academic community, health-care providers, and policy-makers to learn from these experiences; to produce evidence-based guidelines for pre- and post-natal care, and provide additional support for new parents focused on alleviating stress and anxiety and supporting parents with mental health issues. Research is already showing that new parents during the pandemic with good maternal and newborn care were less likely to have mental health issues later. There are lessons to be learned from this, which will hopefully in the long-term ensure we produce better systems of support for new parents.
If you know someone who has become a parent during the pandemic, how can you support them? Speak to them about what it was like. We’ve observed such an outpouring of feelings around this and simply having an opportunity to talk about these feelings can be the first step in processing them. If you can look after their child for a few hours, offer, whilst respecting any rules and boundaries they put in place to protect their little ones. Many new parents won’t have had many (or any) opportunities to have some alone time, reconnect with their partner or cook a nice meal. Even small moments of quiet to have a cup of tea, wash and gather thoughts can be precious.
If you would like to share your own experiences of becoming a parent during the pandemic, then please go to this link to take part. You can also find more information on our project website.
