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Aug 19, 2021 • 32 minutes ago • 3 minute read • Join the conversation 
Andreen Jackson-Ellis and her newborn son Andrew-Dean, who was born at London Health Sciences Centre Sunday Aug. 15, 2021. (Rena Panchyshyn/LHSC)
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That pandemic baby bust some predicted when the COVID-19 crisis first hit?
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Not even close.
The numbers are in at Southwestern Ontario’s largest hospital, and they’re record-breaking. London Health Sciences Centre medical teams delivered 561 newborns last month, its highest monthly total on record, enough to fill the seats on three Boeing 737 jetliners.
“We’re on par for over 500 babies in August. too, but I don’t know how much above 500 we’ll be yet,” said Dr. Tracey Crumley, LHSC’s chief of obstetrics and gynecology.
“Throughout the summer it has been pretty busy, almost every day. Some days really, really busy and other days it’s just steady busy . . . 10 babies would be a slow day these days.”
LHSC delivered about 7,100 babies – roughly the equivalent of the population of the town of St. Marys –in the pandemic’s first year.
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June to August is always the busy season for labour and delivery teams at LHSC, women’s care director Amanda Williams said Wednesday. But they’ve never had a month like this July.
Last month’s birth boom is the biggest since 2012, the earliest data LHSC has and roughly the time that labour and delivery programs at LHSC and St. Joseph’s Health Care London merged. In July 2019, LHSC had 547 births, followed by 504 in July 2020.
The Victoria Hospital program is one of Ontario’s largest, drawing referrals from as far away as Owen Sound and Thunder Bay, Crumley said.
Across Canada, births dropped in late 2020 and early 2021, a possible sign the initial uncertainty and shock of the pandemic made people think twice about starting a family, said Michael Haan, an associate professor in sociology at Western University and director of the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre at Western.
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But that pandemic-induced dip seems short-lived, he said.
“Now it’s becoming increasingly clear that this (pandemic) isn’t going away any time soon,” he said. “I think that people are catching up a bit after a lull.”
The pandemic’s effect on birth rates is unlikely to be as pronounced as other pivotal moments in human history, such as wars, which have a definite start and end date, Haan said. COVID is an evolving and enduring threat, he said.
The children of baby boomers, the baby boom echo, are now in their late 20s and early 30s, an age when they’ll be starting families, Haan said. They are unlikely to put it off indefinitely until the COVID threat is gone.
“My guess, by looking at the age distribution of London’s population, is we’re likely to see a mini-baby boom, probably over the next few years,” he said. “We’re seeing . . . an increase in the number of births just because of the age distribution in London.”
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While the three pandemic waves have cancelled surgeries, forced out-of-region patient transfers and triggered staff redeployments in hospitals across Ontario, the daily work of LHSC’s labour and delivery teams has continued apace, Williams said.
“We are so appreciative of the teams we have. We can’t stress enough how focused they always are on the patients and their experience,” she said. “We’re proud of every single one of them.”
Andreen Jackson-Ellis, who delivered her second child, Andrew-Dean, by caesarean section Sunday, was grateful to the team for making her experience so comforting at such a busy time. “They never forgot, at any point, to care.”
Pandemic visitor restrictions meant her husband couldn’t attend all her checkups along the way, but he was welcomed to the hospital for the delivery.
“It was really good that I could be with my wife at that moment,” Aldean Ellis said. “The doctors, the nurses all made me feel so included in the process. I was the first one to hold our little one in my arms.”
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https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/oh-baby-london-hospital-registers-record-breaking-birth-boom
