Abi189 Stringman

I have a 9 month old baby and am on maternity leave. We have only just applied for child benefit as my partner earns over 60k so didn’t think we would qualify. I appreciate the payments won’t be backdated more than 3 months but will my national insurance credits be backdated longer? I also didn’t realise I needed to opt into this to receive them whilst on maternity leave and don’t want to have a gap on my record. Thanks