Babi Actif: Supporting Parents to be Active with their Babies in the First 1,000 Days of their Lives
The first 1,000 days (from conception to a child’s 2nd birthday) offer a unique window of opportunity to build healthier, happier children and to improve their life chances. Time spent outdoors, even when sleeping, is a vital part of a baby’s development as it is suggested to stimulate them, benefit the way they learn, and help prevent vitamin D deficiencies. Simultaneously, time outdoors has been suggested to be an accessible intervention that may help address the rising mental health crisis in pregnant and post-partum women, with anxiety and depression affecting one in seven women during the perinatal period and associated with increased risk of pre-term delivery, reduced mother-infant bonding, and delays in infant cognitive/emotional development that may persist into childhood. Despite the potential benefits of time outdoors to both mother and baby, time spent outdoors during the foundational years has declined over recent decades. Babi Actif’s aim was to support parents to be active outdoors with their babies during their first 1,000 days. Surveys, co-designed by Bangor University researchers and Babi Actif staff and completed by Babi Actif participants, were complemented by focus groups with participants and service providers to provide in-depth experiences of the programme. Babi Actif sessions were well received by parents and were perceived to have had a positive impact on both parent and baby health and well-being. Focus groups suggested that further reflection on session design and the simplification of outcome assessments may ensure these benefits are accessible to a more diverse range of parents and are more easily recordable over the short- and long-term. Overall, Babi Actif provided physical activity and well-being support to parents and their babies that was not available elsewhere, particularly during the pandemic.
