Pandemic baby Tot born at home on eve of lockdown celebrates first birthday with Zoom party

The mother of a baby born one year ago on Saturday says she is looking forward to the day she can tell her, “when you were a baby the world stopped temporarily because of germs but it is all gone now.”

Evie Wilkinson is one of thousands of babies born since the pandemic was declared and who have met their family primarily through FaceTime, Zoom and other technology.

The tot will have a Zoom party from her home in Clogherhead county Louth tomorrow where she made a very fast arrival last year, minutes after the paramedics arrived. She was due on the 12th March last year, the day Leo Varadkar confirmed schools were closing and Ireland was preparing for what Covid could bring.

Her mum Becky (33), who with husband Tomas (38) also has son Teddy (3), said, “we have been lucky because a small group of our family got to meet Evie just before all the strict restrictions on movement were introduced.”

“Her great granny May Carpenter who is 90 years old, was the only one that missed out on meeting her in March as we didn’t want to put her at risk. She had her first cuddle with her when she was 3 months old.”

“When I look back on the first year of Evie’s life, one of the saddest bits is knowing how much love everyone had for Evie and how desperately they looked forward to baby cuddles and from March 16th to Mid-May no one got to see her.”

Becky said, “My bubble burst on St Patrick’s Day when I cried and cried during the Taoiseach’s speech and that’s when the reality of lockdown set in for me.”

The couple does not think of Evie as a lockdown baby and say they were lucky in comparison to others “who missed having partners there for scans, checkups, and postnatal visits. Tomas was able to be in the hospital all day with us, there were no masks, he was able to pop to the shops and buy clothes for her, they are the things we took for granted that are so different now.”

“Evie has for us been a blessing, a distraction in a world that felt like it was falling apart but we had this little bubble at home. Tomas has benefited from so much bonding time that otherwise he would have spent commuting to Dublin.”

For her first birthday, they will decorate the house as they did for son Teddy’s first birthday party but, “it will be for a Zoom party. I ordered photos of her first year and it was so sad to notice in comparison to Teddy’s first year album that nearly all the photos are at home and she had so few experiences. She was born in the house and pretty much spent her first year at home.

The couple realise they are lucky to have a happy and healthy daughter who has taken the last year in her stride.

Becky said, “One of our hopes is in the very near future Teddy or Evie will ask ‘what are those weird yellow stickers’ in a shop window with the word Covid on and we’ll be able to tell them that when Evie was a baby the world stopped temporarily because of germs but it’s all gone now! “

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Online Editors