Nearly a year after lockdown, the babies are coming
Deliveries are up and yard sign rental business swells amid Charlotte baby boom; Fairmeadows neighborhood gets frisky
This article appeared in the Feb. 20, 2021, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with original local news. Want articles like this straight to your inbox? Sign up for free today:
The baby strollers and the wooden stork signs are out in force in the Fairmeadows neighborhood off Sharon Road in the SouthPark area. And as the weather warms and the spring flowers emerge, so will more babies.
The neighborhood, with its sweeping lawns and 1960s brick ranches and split-levels, has been having a renaissance in recent years as lots of young couples move in, ready to start or expand their families.
So the backdrop was already fertile for a baby boom, neighbors say. The pandemic likely just hastened it.
No one has kept count of how many babies Fairmeadows has welcomed during the pandemic, but neighbors The Ledger talked to say the numbers have been swelling.
Kristen and Wes Collins, who live on one of Fairmeadows’ major thoroughfares, figured their family of four was complete last year, with two kids under the age of 4.
In March, as the pandemic bore down, Wes called for a vasectomy appointment.
No can do, his medical provider said. Vasectomies were considered elective surgeries, and only essential surgeries were allowed because of the pandemic.
A couple of months later came a surprise — Kristen learned she was pregnant. Little Winston Wallace was born Feb. 8 at 8 lbs. and 20.5 inches, joining siblings Charlotte, 3, and Jackson, 2.
Winston will have plenty of playmates on the street, his mom says.
Three families in a string of 10 houses on the Collins’ street or right around the corner will welcome bundles of joy in April or May.
“It’s sort of crazy,” Kristen Collins says.
There’s lots of young energy in the Fairmeadows neighborhood near SouthPark these days, as couples including Wes and Kristen Collins bring home new babies in what’s being described as a neighborhood baby boom.
Why the boom?: Fairmeadows neighbors say they hear the usual jokes about there being “something in the water” and the like, but when you think about it, a pandemic baby boom is not inconceivable.
Spouses who normally travel for work have been grounded, and are able to take advantage of those days each month when conditions are ripe to conceive.
And despite what people are saying about the pandemic making us more sick and tired of our family members, well, some couples are milking the together time for all it’s worth.
Charlotte’s two big hospital systems, Atrium and Novant, were unable to pull together year-over-year birth figures for The Ledger, but a WSOC-TV story in December reported that Novant was expecting a 7.5% bump in births in January 2021 and a near 10% spike in June.
Dr. Lorene Temming, a maternal fetal medicine physician and medical director of Labor and Delivery with Atrium Health, said that Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center saw an increase in deliveries in 2020 as compared to 2019, and projects an increase in volume in 2021.
“In particular, Charlotte OB/GYN, which is in the SouthPark area, has had an increase in new patients, visit volume and delivery volume,” she wrote in a statement to The Ledger.
“It is difficult to know if the pandemic is directly responsible for the increase in [the] number of births we are seeing, although it certainly could be related to increased time at home as well as increased flexibility with work scheduling,” she wrote.
Temming pointed out that birth rates traditionally decrease when there’s a decline in the labor market, so public health officials nationally have predicted a decrease in births due to the pandemic.
But Charlotte has had lower unemployment rates than other parts of the country — 5.8% in Charlotte compared to 6.7% nationally in December 2020 — “and this may explain why we are seeing a different trend,” she said.
A flight of storks: Companies that rent yard signs heralding a baby’s arrival say they’re seeing no signs of business contracting, either.
Jaime Volturno, who owns Happy Sign Surprise in Charlotte and Greensboro, told The Ledger that after more than 10 years of business in Charlotte, “this is the first time that we have not had enough inventory to fulfill all requests for our personalized baby announcement signs.”
Her Greensboro office is seeing that part of the business expand, too. After focusing on birthday signs for the last 5 years, they’re having to invest in baby signs because of demand.
Fun on the horizon: Being home with a newborn during pandemic times isn’t starkly different than pre-pandemic, Collins says. Leaving the house with someone who needs changing, feeding and soothing in frequent intervals has been a challenge since the dawn of civilization. It almost helps that there’s nowhere to go.
“Next month, I’ll start to feel antsy because we should be out and about,” she said. “And visitors — we’re not really sure what to do about visitors.”
Doctors have warned the family to take extra Covid precautions to avoid Kristen coming down with the virus. Because as any young family knows, if mom goes down, everything goes down.
But there’s lots to look forward to on the Fairmeadows horizon.
Kristen Collins says she’s excited for the pandemic to recede and fun activities like library story times to start back up.
And before they know it, the little ones born during the pandemic baby boom will be off to school.
“There will be tons of classmates for these kids,” she said.
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