Maternal Stress During Pregnancy

Pregnancy in itself is an extremely stressful experience for a woman, with all the physiological and psychological changes that take place as pregnancy progresses. It is not surprising then that external stress often exerts significant influence on pregnant women and can result in negative physical and emotional outcomes.

The most drastic and tragic result of excessive maternal stress during pregnancy is a miscarriage. It can also result in early labor and pre-term birth. Babies that are not carried to term tend to have more health problems and to develop - physically and cognitively - slower than babies that are carried to term.

Other results of excessive stress on expecting mothers may not be as visible from the start but are just as serious and worthy of concern as physical manifestations. For example, it has been shown in clinical studies that children of mothers who experienced excessive stress during pregnancy tended to have more frequent and severe sleep problems as toddlers. A number of possible explanations for it exist, the most common being that stress during pregnancy impedes the development of the nervous system. As a result, children tend to be more irritable, less attentive, and have more difficulty establishing healthy sleeping patterns.

Another documented result of high stress in women during pregnancy is their children being born with permanently elevated blood pressure, which in turn leads to a host of other health problems. Other children of excessively stressed-out mothers are born with vitamin deficiencies, of which the most dangerous is iron deficiency, which could lead to anemia and further health problems. These conditions are treated with medications and vitamins, but they often persist through the person's life.

Contemporary research places much of the blame for the negative influence of the expecting mother's stress on her baby on cortisol, the stress hormone. People under stress produce excessive amounts of cortisol. If stressful situations are infrequent, a human body has the ability to handle excessive cortisol without undue effects. However, if stress is frequent and acute, high cortisol levels become unmanageable, causing numerous health problems. Expecting mothers pass excessive cortisol through the umbilical cord and placenta to their fetuses. Permanent elevated blood pressure, or hypertonia, in children of such women is one of the most common health effects. Cortisol affects other systems as well, however, causing numerous other health problems, some of which children "grow out of" while others persist through their whole life.