Pregnancy Stress and Child Development

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A little stress during pregnancy may actually be healthy for your unborn baby.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the National Institute of Child Health Development (NICHD) evaluated surveys from 137 healthy, pregnant women with low-risk, normal pregnancies. Participants reported on their levels of anxiety and stress between the 24th and 32nd weeks of pregnancy and at six weeks and two years after birth.

Researchers were surprised to find women who reported more stress and anxiety during pregnancy had children who were somewhat more advanced in their mental and motor development at age 2. Results also reveal prenatal stress or anxiety did not affect the children's ability to handle their own emotions or control their behavior except in children of women who had more negative feelings about being pregnant. Researchers don't know whether this is a biological effect or due to the way the children were treated after birth.

"While these findings may seem counterintuitive, chemicals that are produced by stress have a well-known influence on organ growth and development," says lead author Janet A. DiPietro, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist and professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Mild to moderate stress has been proposed to be important to successful adaptation to the environment after birth and necessary for optimal brain development."

Study participants were healthy, financially stable women who had the normal stresses that come with juggling the many roles and responsibilities of modern life. DiPietro acknowledges the results might have been different if the study had included women who had more chronic, physical or severe turmoil in their lives. But she concludes the findings should put many pregnant women's minds at ease.

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SOURCE: Child Development, 2006;77:573