Being pregnant is stressful. In a perfect world we would see the little blue line of new life then book 9 months of yoga and pedicures. Almost of us, even so, keep working, get into a bigger, more run-down home and rowing with our spouses just about money. Even so new research shows that looking after ourselves during pregnancy could be the most important thing for our children.
In a survey of pregnant, largely middle-class, women at a London hospital, nearly a quarter felt anxious and depressed, while the same number argued often with their partners. These women’s babies had a lower birth weight, lower IQ, slower cognitive development and more anxiety than those born to the other women in the survey.
Although postpartum depression is a long-familiar condition, prenatal depression is most common and at least as negative to the child, according to research by a professor of perinatal psychobiology, Vivette Glover, of Imperial College London.
It’s known that being stressed during pregnancy is as bad for your baby as smoking or being obese (these findings were published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2007) but now we know why and how.
Glover’s most recent research has shown that maternal anxiety affects the placenta, reducing the activity of the barrier enzyme that hinders the hormone cortisol from reaching the foetus. This means that women’s stress levels reach the growing baby on a physical level. This, successively, has an impact on foetal brain development, a phenomenon that has been clearly demonstrated in animals.
“People used to think that whenever something was congenital, seeming at birth, it had to be genetic. As a matter of fact it can be an in-vitro reaction of genes and environment,” Glover says. Her research shows that pre-natal stress hugely growths the likelihood of a child having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, cognitive delay, anxiousness and depression. Stress during pregnancy as well increments the risk of the child being autistic and, in rare cases, schizophrenic. Stressed mothers also produce babies with lower birth weight, which can be an indicator for coronary heart condition in later life.
The greatest British study of the effects of maternal prenatal stress was in Bristol, where thousands of women answered a questionnaire during pregnancy and so at steady periods for fifteen years later on, drawing their children’s behaviour. Postpartum depression was factored in and saliva tests monitored the children’s stress responses. From the fifteen percentage of women who had experienced the most stress and depression during pregnancy, the likelihood of their children having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders, anxiety, depression and emotional problems was doubled.
“The information on anxiousness and depression was brought during pregnancy at eighteen weeks and over again at thirty-two weeks, and the stronger result came from the later test. The organs are taking form during the first trimester of pregnancy, but the brain is developing the whole way through,” Glover explains. “The organs are sensitive when they’re forming and, once formed, they’re harder to change. One time attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is built, for instance, it’s really difficult to vary.”
To base the tide of guilt washing over most mothers reading this, Glover says that she’s new, unpublished, research to show that empathic mothering may buffer against some of the adverse effects of stress and be “really positive”. Alas, for those of us who were stressed out of our minds during pregnancy and so went straight back to work, this is stint comfort.
Research by Sir Michael Rutter, a leading child psychologist, has produced evidence that mental health is worse in kids nowadays than in the past. This possibly because women are more distressed during pregnancy, more potential to be individual and more improbable to be supported by their families.
“In evolutionary terms, stress possibly prepares the kid for survival of the fittest in a stressful environment. Whenever a child is nervous and has attention deficiency, it will be very alerting to risk. This may once have been adaptative, beneficial for the child, but it Is not any longer,” Glover says. The research as well advises that the damage to the foetus caused by maternal stress can be advanced to the next generation.
The animal evidence on the damage caused by maternal stress is conclusive, Glover says. Research on rhesus monkeys, started by Harry Harlow in the US, helped to revolutionise childcare in the 1950s, at one time when it was thought that overmuch physical contact with babies was a bad idea. Harlow’s unmothered monkeys were seriously disturbed.
Mary Schneider, Professor of Occupational Therapy and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has taken up Harlow’s baton, showing that if you make a pregnant monkey stressed, her young will be more anxious and have a fear of being touched, which is common in autistic children. The structure of the young monkeys’ brains was also permanently altered, including a reduced volume of the hippocampus — an area important in stress responses and memory — and decreased right-left asymmetry in the brain — in other words, less difference between the function of the two halves of the brain. This may explain why children whose mothers have been stressed in pregnancy are more likely to be mixed-handed than right-handed.
Research into antidepressants using rats showed that when young were dropped into water, the progeny of unstressed mothers tried to get out, but those of stressed mothers allowed themselves to sink. When the previously anxious young were given the happy pills they also tried to swim.
So what can we do? Well, intervention helps. The Family Nurse Partnership, pioneered by David Olds in the US, is being adopted in the UK. Olds was working with deprived toddlers and realised that by the time the children were 3 a great deal of damage had already been done. He began to work with pregnant mothers, mainly young, single and poor, providing a weekly meeting with a nurse to help the women to gain some control over their lives.
The partnership lifts the women out of isolation and a lack of support, both big risk factors for depression and anxiety. This was a 30-year study and the crime rate among the children born to the scheme’s mothers halved, their health improved and their education was more successful.
“Health, education and crime should not be separated,” Glover argues. “Helping women starts with the health service, but the effects are social, especially as regards crime. ADHD, cognitive delay, conduct disorder — all the results of a stressful pregnancy — are indicative for crime. One study showed prenatal depression in the mother led to violence in the adolescence of the child. These issues are linked.”
We all want our children to be happy and well, and we would do pretty much anything to ensure it. It is interesting to know, then, that the best thing that we can do for our babies is to be happy ourselves — especially when we’re pregnant.
HOW TO UNWIND
Eat foods containing B vitamins, such as wholegrains, which increase your levels of the anti-stress hormone serotonin. Exercise is proven to ease tension. Swimming is perfect, as your bump is supported by the water. Midwives say commuting is a big source of stress. Ask your employer if you can avoid rush hours by starting and finishing work earlier.