While COVID-19 brought much of normal life screeching to a halt last year, it couldn’t stop new lives from being born, but the impact on parents and medical professionals is just coming to light.
Key points:
- Parents have struggled with the impact of coronavirus lockdowns
- Anxiety levels surrounding births have soared, new research shows
- But mothers and fathers say they understand the need for increased protections in hospitals
The circumstances the children of 2020 were born into were unlike any other in living memory, with a global pandemic spreading across the world and restrictions limiting many of the day-to-day activities usually taken for granted.
International and interstate borders were shut, entering a hospital was out of the question unless absolutely necessary, and many mothers and their partners had to sharply adjust their expectations of welcoming a new child into their family.
This impact is the subject of world-first research by Curtin University, which found the impact was felt not just by new parents, but by the maternity workforce, including doctors, nurses, midwives, and midwifery students.
Lockdown left new parents in the lurch
The Adelaide-based Moss family were set to welcome twins Jude and Maeve just as coronavirus cases began to be reported in South Australia.
“We knew with twins there would be a bit of an extra stay in hospital, but we didn’t expect in any way shape or form for there to be a pandemic at the same time,” mother Amy Moss said.
The twins suffered some complications after they were born five weeks premature and ended up having an extended stay in the special care unit at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
That left Ms Moss to shoulder the load of being the only parent allowed into hospital.
Mr Moss had limited contact with his new children in the beginning, missing many of the early milestones after they were born, including first baths and first feeds.
“It just put a lot of pressure on Amy as the person going in and the only one seeing them while they [were] going through all their health and developmental things,” he said.
“It put a lot of pressure on her and you want to be there, you want to be there for her.
“I got this little window into a couple of days with them, but then that sort of three-week period, where I didn’t see them or have any contact with them — it was quite a distant feeling.”
While the pandemic certainly disrupted their birth plans, they were ultimately grateful for the lengths the healthcare system went to in order to keep them safe and with little community transmission SA, there were no extended lockdowns.
It was, however, a different story across the border in Melbourne, where parents Tiff and Tim Walsh welcomed their second child Teddy in the middle of Victoria’s first hard lockdown.
After a traumatic birth, ending with a caesarean section for Tiff and not seeing her newborn for over 24 hours, they struggled with the impact of living in a locked-down city for months on end.
They were largely cut off from their support networks after Teddy’s birth, with neither family nor friends able to visit their home, mothers’ groups cancelled and post-partum care delivered either via telehealth or sparingly within the home.
Ms Walsh developed a wound infection twice and struggled to get the help she needed.
“I was trying to establish breastfeeding and was informed by the hospital that I had a follow-up consultation with the lactation consultants. The morning of [the consultation] I was told it was actually just via telephone,” Ms Walsh.
“That’s not helpful. Especially trying to establish breastfeeding, you need to see the latch and everything, so that really affected our breastfeeding journey.”
Mr Walsh also had to deal with being sidelined from the care of his own children.
“When the maternal child health nurse was able to come into the house, I was told that I had to go and wait in another room. I wasn’t allowed to be present,” he said.
“I like to advocate as well for my child, and I wasn’t able to really do that.”
The lockdown had a lasting impact on the family and particularly on Ms Walsh, who is still living with the ongoing effects on her mental health.
“It was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, to the point where I was diagnosed with post-partum anxiety and depression,” Ms Walsh said.
“I’ve actually got PTSD from it all.”
Study revealed high anxiety levels
Curtin University’s study, which looked at the impact of COVID-19 on the experience of childbirth, found high levels of anxiety in both parents and medical practitioners.
Lead researcher Zoe Bradfield said almost 5,000 people responded to her survey, recounting their experiences during the pandemic.
“There have been increased levels of anxiety across the five stakeholder cohorts,” Dr Bradfield said.
“Where women couldn’t have their support people with them, where they had separation from their families when they went home, they couldn’t celebrate and join in the joyous period that usually is introducing a new baby, to your community.
“For maternity service workers, the way that they provide care has changed too, so their inability to see women face-to-face has caused distress to them as well.”
The study also found many families and practitioners felt the impact of trauma after a difficult or traumatic birth experience.
“Wherever women’s choices and control over their bodily autonomy — choices for where, when, how they birth and who is there to support them — are limited, we may expect to see an increase in trauma in women and – we are becoming increasingly aware – their partners too,” Dr Bradfield said.
“Women’s desire [and] primal need for choice and control was reported to be behind the actions [and] intentions of women in our study who looked to switch to homebirth or to change their model of care to a continuity model where they would, at the least, have care by a known midwife during their birth.
“Almost a third of women in our study made changes to their plans for birthing as a result of COVID, almost a third weren’t able to have the support people they wanted at their birth, almost 70 per cent received no antenatal education.”
A midwife who participated in the study told the ABC that the move to telehealth services was a real concern for her, as she felt it left vulnerable women like those living in domestic violence situations or those who speak a language other than English at a higher risk of complications during pregnancy and birth.
For those new parents who have experienced those complications, the feelings of sorrow have been worse.
“Those whose babies have had untoward outcomes — they have felt even more alone during this time. So, in the period of grief, they’ve not had the support that they’ve needed,” Dr Bradfield said.
“The fact that this most fundamental of human experiences, which is making more humans, giving birth, really requires a human focus on models of care.
“So rather than the traditional fragmented models that basically run to see the system run at all costs, we need to be orientating our models of care in a human-centred way.”
Dr Bradfield would like to see her research inform policy decisions in medical care.
“We’ll be able to contribute to policy as we seek to prepare ourselves to provide care for future health crises, and also for future pandemics, which we’re told to expect,” she said.
“We’re pleased to be able to deliver this first ever human impact evidence to contribute to that.”