Signs point to a post-pandemic baby boom in Wichita

Kansas health officials are starting to see a baby boom.

Concerns surrounding the pandemic likely led to a 2020 lull in pregnancies, especially at the end of the year when babies conceived at the start of the pandemic would have started to be born, the officials said.

But business is back and booming.

April set a record for early ultrasounds at The University of Kansas Health System, which typically delivers around 3,000 babies a year.

At Ascension Via Christi Wichita, the number of births last month was higher than any April since at least 2018. And, so far this year, the number of appointments for expecting mothers points to a busy 2021.

“We don’t disappoint in the Midwest,” Dr. Janey Maki said Thursday from the Ascension Medical Group Via Christi OBGYN in Wichita before checking the heart of Kelsey Cook’s unborn baby boy. “We do our fair share … pandemic or not.”

Maki delivered Cook’s first baby — a girl named Emersyn born May 6, 2020. When it came time for delivery, Cook worried about where and how it would work since COVID-19 restrictions changed the way everything operated at that time.

Emersyn was conceived before the pandemic. The 25-year-old and her fiance decided to have their second child together in the midst of it.

Wanting to have her second child born close to the first outweighed the desire to wait. Still, she has concerns about getting sick and how things could change if the pandemic takes a wrong turn.

Baby Thayer is expected Aug. 19.

Visits, births and all other baby-related activities at the health system were down between 20 and 25% from November though February, according to an estimate from Dr. Charles Gibbs, The University of Kansas Health System Maternal Fetal Medicine Division director.

Things started to pick up at the end of March, and then April set a record for early ultrasounds.

“If this is really the beginning of a trend, summer ought to be very interesting,” he said.

Some thought the stay home orders would spur a baby boom, but it didn’t come to fruition around most of the country in 2020, he said. It took a while, but numbers show Gibbs, at least in their area, that early fears about the pandemic have started to change.

Data shows pregnant women who catch COVID-19 are not more likely to die than similar-aged women who are not pregnant, he said. Pregnant women who catch the virus are more likely to end up in the intensive care unit, but Gibbs said he wonders how much of that is concerned doctors being extra cautious.

Gibbs and health officials at Ascension attributed 2020 lulls to COVID-19 concerns. But those drops in births were also felt across the country.

Provisional data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported roughly 3.6 million babies born in the U.S. in 2020, a decline from about 3.75 million in 2019.

It was the lowest number since 1979 and the sixth straight year the number dropped.

November had the fewest number of births and December was third — December also had the largest gap between its counterpart from the prior year.

The virus was first detected in the U.S. in the early part of 2020 and all 50 states had cases by mid-March, according to the CDC. Nine months from a March conception would put a delivery around December.

Kansas’ 34,360 births in 2020 also mark a six-year decline in the state, according to state and provisional data — although Ascension’s births have not followed the same pattern during that time.

The healthcare system had 2,452 births in 2020, down 170 from the prior year.

Visits for expecting mothers at the Ascension Medical Group Via Christi OBGYN —where about half of the mothers who deliver at Ascension have their appointments — has seen 645 visits from January through April this year versus 548 during the same period last year.

“Things are opening back up, masks have been decreased and I think it’s kind of a light at the end of the tunnel being able to celebrate the new life,” according to Victoria Parris, physician practice manager at the Ascension Medical Group Via Christi OBGYN.

Ascension’s also seen a “significant increase in deliveries” the last couple months, she said.

“I think we are definitely seeing (a baby boom) in our community,” she said.