When Jessa Lira got married in 2017, she didn’t anticipate being ready to have children for at least a couple of years; she wanted to enjoy life as a newlywed for a while and travel.
She finally felt ready to start trying in early 2020, just as COVID-19 hit.
Lira and her husband, who both live in Toronto, immediately reassessed this plan as their concerns about trying to have a baby in a pandemic mounted: what would doctor’s appointments look like? Would she have to give birth alone? What were the health implications of contracting the virus while pregnant?
“We knew for a fact that it was not the safest time to have a baby in a time of a pandemic,” Lira told Global News. “So we decided to wait for a couple of months and to see how it goes.”
In deciding to put off having a baby due to COVID-19, Lira and her husband joined the ranks of a growing number of Canadian couples who are deciding to delay having children or to have fewer children than previously planned.
1 in 4 Canadians altering family plans
Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of Canadians aged 15 to 49 have changed their fertility plans because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Statistics Canada paper released on Wednesday.
The study, conducted between April and June 2021, found almost one in five (19 per cent) of Canadians now wanted to have fewer children, while 14 per cent said they wanted to have a child later than they had originally planned. These answers were more common in people that didn’t have any children already, or people from minority groups.
Medical professionals agree with the findings, saying many of their clients’ plans to start or expand families were severely altered by the pandemic.
Economic pressures, uncertainty around jobs and living affordability were the main factors for those delaying having children.
Despite rumours of a lockdown-induced baby boom, according to StatsCan, just four per cent of respondents in the wellness survey said they now want more children or to have children sooner than previously planned.
Experts say this is likely due to inordinate periods of time spent at home reassessing their families and being unable to travel abroad.
Women give birth ‘late’ in Canada
Canada is already considered a “late” childbearing country. In 2020, the average age of mothers at the time of delivery was 31.3 years old.
The country’s fertility rate has also been steadily declining since 2008 — a trend seen in much of the rest of the Western world. France, England and the United States have also reported fewer babies born in 2020 compared with 2019.
Since the onset of the pandemic, that decrease has intensified: Canada’s fertility rate decreased from 1.47 children per woman in 2019 to a record low of 1.40 children per woman in 2020.
There were 13,434 fewer births in 2020 than in 2019, the greatest year-over-year decrease (3.6 per cent) since records began and the lowest number of births in any year since 2006.
Tali Bogler, chair of family medicine obstetrics at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, said this decline was exacerbated by the pandemic.
Many of her clients were either delaying starting a family or cancelling plans to expand their brood due to recent economic pressures.
“I’m seeing young couples who have gone through job insecurity and job loss and are delaying, maybe a year from now, two years from now,” she said.
“And then I’m also seeing couples that have one or two kids who might have thought about having a third kid, and are now asking for either a vasectomy for the partner and saying no, this is it.”
Affordability a factor in smaller families
Rising costs of living were an important factor in those choices, she said. It was especially pertinent to those living in the GTA, where house prices soared to an average of nearly $1.2 million in October.
“Affordability is a huge concern for families. It’s worsened during the pandemic, especially here in Toronto, and that might have further stress and further impact on desired family sizes and when people plan to have a child,” she said.
This notion is supported by the StatCan data, which showed that those living in one of the Atlantic provinces (16 per cent) or Quebec (13 per cent) were less likely to have made changes to their parenthood journeys, compared to those living in Ontario (22 per cent). The report authors pointed to housing affordability and COVID-related economic pressures as a possible factor, as well as Quebec’s low-fee childcare programme.
10:13 Cost of housing biggest crisis outside the pandemic: Singh
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Affordability was a big factor in Samantha Tranter’s decision to stop after her second child, who was born in March 2021, after she also delayed getting pregnant due to the pandemic.
Tranter planned to get pregnant in February 2020, after her son’s first birthday. When COVID-19 hit, the Waterloo resident says she “gave up for a while,” as she and her fiance couldn’t find the time to try to conceive.
“My job went from being in the office full-time, to working from home and navigating that whole obstacle with an array of technology problems, while trying to take care of a newly one-year-old,” she said.
“It was difficult to just find time to spend together. By the end of the workday, we were both just so exhausted that the mere thought of being intimate was exhausting.”
Tranter and her fiance also cancelled the wedding they had planned for June 2020.
But as Ontario began to tentatively reopen a few months later, Tranter and her now-husband decided to move forward with their nuptials and ended up getting married in the backyard of a bed-and-breakfast with 20 guests.
They decided to extend their family soon after. Tranter’s second child was born in March 2020.
Samantha Tranter, pictured with her two children and husband. Tranter delayed having her second child due to the pandemic. Supplied.
Supplied
The couple don’t plan on having more, mostly due to the housing crisis and rising inflation, which rose to 4.7 per cent in October — the largest year-over-year gain since 2003.
“In 25 years when my kids are in the same position I am, they’re probably going to still be living with me because they can’t afford to leave,” Tranter said.
‘We barely bring him outside’
For Lira, the pandemic-related baby delay was also short-lived. As the months dragged on, she felt they weren’t “getting any younger” and the pandemic did not seem to be abating.
So the couple decided to try, and found out they were pregnant in November 2020. But Lira, who works in the medical field, recounts the experience of being pregnant in a pandemic as “terrifying.”
“Going to work every single day and dealing with doctors, patients and other colleagues, not knowing if they were exposed, or might have the virus [was difficult],” she said.
Jessa Lira and her husband welcomed their first child in May 2021. Supplied.
Supplied
In the end, however, the couple were able to attend in-person appointments, ultrasounds and had a healthy baby in July 2021. However, the anxiety around being pregnant in the pandemic has boiled over to having a young child in a pandemic.
“Right now, we barely bring him outside — only for a doctor’s appointment or for a walk at the park maybe once a week. I know we can do better but the anxiety that COVID is giving us, it’s just so scary. As much as we want him to enjoy the world, we also want to protect him the best way we can.”
The experience has not altered her plans of having three children in total, however. But she hopes the pandemic is over before she tries for her second child.
For Tiffany Ermine, from Prince Albert, Sask., having a baby in the pandemic was enough to put her off ever having another. Ermine gave birth to her second child in June 2020, and the experience “terrified” her. That, coupled with unaffordable living costs mean her dream of having four or five kids will likely never become a reality.
“It devastates me, but I’d rather live comfortably and be able to give my kids the things they want and need,” she said.
Fertility clinics in high demand
But what about those who can’t conceive naturally? Anecdotally, things appear to be going in the opposite direction, with fertility specialists in high demand.
Dr. Sony Sierra, deputy medical director and partner at Trio Fertility, said she was seeing a rise in new clients wanting fertility assessments, to either understand where they were at with their fertility or to begin fertility treatment. For those wanting to conceive, this was largely due to long periods of time spent at home and international travel being off the table, Sierra said.
Trio, like many other clinics across the country, was forced to close for three months as Canada grappled with the pandemic. When the clinic reopened in May 2020, people were rushing to get appointments.
“When our fertility clinics were closed, that was very stressful for people who wanted to start their families or move forward with their families. So when we reopened, there was this huge surge of people who wanted to get in quickly before something like that was to happen again,” Sierra said.
“We had a very long lockdown in Ontario, and we were forced to be in our homes, thinking about your family and what that looks like. And so people were wanting to sort of get started sooner rather than later.”
Canada ‘may never catch up’
However, the clinic also had clients who did not return when they reopened, after reassessing their outlook on children or wanting to delay fertility treatment. This was due to economic pressures, people losing jobs, people relocating across the country and people “choosing to spend their money differently,” Sierra said.
Sierra said 2020 was a tough year for a lot of reasons, and not just the pandemic. “Socially, culturally, there were a lot of things that were going on that made people sort of stop and say, ‘Is this the right time to bring a baby into the world’?”
But this delay in fertility treatments was also likely to have contributed to the lower birth rate in 2020.
While Bogler and Sierra said women should not be concerned over delaying pregnancies for a year or two, those waiting too long past what’s considered a woman’s fertile window, generally between 20 and 25 years of age, risked not being able to have the family sizes they planned for.
Bogler said the pandemic would also likely impact Canada’s declining birth rate for years to come.
“Historically, what we’ve seen is the longer you delay, families might not be able to catch up. And so as a country, we might not ever catch up to the number of deliveries that we might have seen if the pandemic hadn’t happened,” Bogler said.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Three NASA astronauts whose prolonged space station mission ended with a trip to the hospital last month declined to say Friday which one of them was sick.
Astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps publicly discussed their spaceflight for the first time since returning from the International Space Station on Oct. 25. They spent nearly eight months in orbit, longer than expected because of all the trouble with Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule and rough weather, including Hurricane Milton.
Soon after their SpaceX capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast, the three were taken to a hospital in nearby Pensacola along with Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who launched with them back in March.
One of the Americans ended up spending the night there for an undisclosed “medical issue.” NASA declined to say who was hospitalized or why, citing medical privacy.
When asked at Friday’s news conference which one had been sick, the astronauts refused to comment. Barratt, a doctor who specializes in space medicine, declined to even describe the symptoms that the unidentified astronaut had.
“Spaceflight is still something we don’t fully understand. We’re finding things that we don’t expect sometimes. This was one of those times and we’re still piecing things together on this,” said Barratt, the only member of the crew who had flown in space before.
Epps said everyone is different in how they respond to space — and gravity.
“That’s the part that you can’t predict,” she said, adding, “Every day is better than the day before.”
Dominick said little things like sitting comfortably in a hard chair took several days to get used to once he returned. He said he didn’t use the treadmill at all during his time in space, as part of an experiment to see what equipment might be pared on a long trip to Mars. The first time he walked was when he got out of the capsule.
The two astronauts who served as test pilots for Boeing’s Starliner — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — will remain at the space station until February, flying back with SpaceX. Starliner returned empty in September.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Forty-three monkeys bred for medical research that escaped a compound in South Carolina have been spotted in the woods near the site and workers are using food to try to recapture them, authorities said Friday.
The Rhesus macaques made a break for it Wednesday after an employee at the Alpha Genesis facility in Yemassee didn’t fully lock a door as she fed and checked on them, officials said.
“They are very social monkeys and they travel in groups, so when the first couple go out the door the others tend to just follow right along,” Alpha Genesis CEO Greg Westergaard told CBS News.
Westergaard said his main goal is to have the monkeys returned safely with no other problems. “I think they are having an adventure,” he said.
The monkeys on Friday were exploring the outer fence of the Alpha Genesis compound and are cooing at the monkeys inside, police said in a statement.
“The primates are exhibiting calm and playful behavior, which is a positive indication,” the police statement said, adding company workers are closely watching the monkeys while keeping their distance as they work to safely recapture them.
The monkeys are about the size of a cat. They are all females weighing about 7 pounds (3 kilograms).
Alpha Genesis, federal health officials and police all said the monkeys pose no risk to public health. The facility breeds the monkeys to sell to medical and other researchers.
“They are not infected with any disease whatsoever. They are harmless and a little skittish,” Yemassee Police Chief Gregory Alexander said Thursday.
Authorities still recommend that people who live near the compound about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from downtown Yemassee shut their windows and doors and call 911 if they see the monkeys. Approaching them could make them more skittish and harder to capture, officials said.
Eve Cooper, a biology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who has studied rhesus macaques, said the animals have the potential to be dangerous and urged people to keep their distance.
Rhesus macaques monkeys can be aggressive. And some carry the herpes B virus, which can be fatal to humans, Cooper said.
However, Alpha Genesis states on its website that it specializes in pathogen-free primates. Cooper noted that there are pathogen-free populations of rhesus macaques that have been quarantined and tested.
“I would give them a wide berth,” Cooper said. “They’re unpredictable animals. And they can behave quite aggressively when they’re afraid.”
Alpha Genesis provides primates for research worldwide at its compound about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Savannah, Georgia, according to its website.
Locally, it is known as “the monkey farm.” And there is more amusement than panic around Yemassee and its population of about 1,100 just off Interstate 95 about 2 miles from Auldbrass Plantation, a Frank Lloyd Wright house designed in the 1930s.
There have been escapes before, but the monkeys haven’t caused problems, said William McCoy, who owns Lowcountry Horology, a clock and watch repair shop.
“They normally come home because that’s where the food is,” he said.
McCoy has lived in Yemassee for about two years and while he plans to stay away from the monkeys, he has his own light-hearted plan to get them back.
“I’m stocking up bananas, maybe they’ll show up,” McCoy said.
The Alpha Genesis compound is regularly inspected by federal officials.
In 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture fined Alpha Genesis $12,600 in part after officials said 26 primates escaped from the Yemassee facility in 2014 and an additional 19 got out in 2016.
The company’s fine was also issued because of individual monkey escapes as well as the killing of one monkey by others when it was placed in the wrong social group, according to a report from the USDA.
The group Stop Animal Exploitation Now sent a letter Thursday to the USDA asking the agency to immediately send an inspector to the Alpha Genesis facility, conduct a thorough investigation and treat them as a repeated violator. The group was involved in the 2018 fine against the company.
“The clear carelessness which allowed these 40 monkeys to escape endangered not only the safety of the animals, but also put the residents of South Carolina at risk,” wrote Michael Budkie, executive director of the group.
The USDA, which has inspected the compound 10 times since 2020, didn’t immediately respond to the letter.
The facility’s most recent federal inspection in May showed there were about 6,700 primates on site and no issues.
In a 2022 review, federal veterinarians reported two animals died when their fingers were trapped in structures and they were exposed to harsh weather. They also found cages weren’t adequately secure. Inspectors said criminal charges, civil penalties or other sanctions could follow if the problems weren’t fixed.
Since then, Alpha Genesis has undergone six inspections with minor problems reported only once.
In January 2023, the USDA said temperatures were out of the 45 to 85 degree Fahrenheit (7.2 to 29.5 degree Celsius) required range at some of the compound’s monkey cages. The inspection found moldy food in one bin, sharp edges on a gate that could cut an animal and sludge, food waste, used medical supplies, mechanical equipment, and general construction debris on the grounds.
Supporters of medical research involving nonhuman primates said they are critical to lifesaving medical advances like creating vaccines against COVID-19 because of their similarities to people. Keeping a domestic supply of the animals is critical to prevent shortages for U.S. researchers.
Humans have been using the rhesus macaque for scientific research since the late 1800s. Scientists believe that rhesus macaques and humans split from a common ancestor about 25 million years ago and share about 93% of the same DNA.
These monkeys have been launched into space on V2 rockets, used for AIDS research, had their genome mapped and made stars of their own reality television show. They were in such high demand in the early 2000s that a shortage led to scientists paying up to $10,000 per animal.
Outside of rats and mice, rhesus macaques are one of the most studied animals on the planet, said Dario Maestripieri, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago who wrote the 2007 book “Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World.”
The animals are very family oriented, siding with relatives when fights break out. And they’re adept at building political alliances in the face of threats from other monkeys. But they can be painful to watch. Monkeys with lower status in the hierarchy live in a constant state of fear and intimidation, Maestripieri said.
“In some ways, they kind of represent some of the worst aspects of human nature,” Maestripieri said.
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Lovan reported from Louisville, Kentucky, and Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland speaks with reporters after chairing a special cabinet committee working on Canada’s plan to deal with the incoming Donald Trump administration. Freeland says she’s stood up for Canadian interests in the past and is ready to go another round. (Nov. 8, 2024)
