#174 Something else to worry about.....

There was an article in Time Magazine in late September by Annie Murphy Paul that has had me thinking ever since. The article was titled “Fetal Origins:  How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Your Life” and was about how the environment in the womb can affect your baby’s health for the rest of his life. She talked about the obvious things such as diet, alcohol and air quality but then she went into a different area. She wrote about the effect mom’s emotional health can have on a baby, and how that can last for a lifetime.




I am not a health nut. I don’t really exercise, I don’t eat all that well, although I do try to do better when I’m pregnant. I stay away from alcohol and smoky places; I try to eat more fruits and vegetables. But apparently now I have to monitor my emotions as well.



“Catherine Monk, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, has advanced a…startling proposal: that a pregnant woman's mental state can shape her offspring's psyche. "Research indicates that even before birth, mothers' moods may affect child development," Monk says.”



Uh oh. So all that grief and job stress is not working in baby boy’s favor. What exactly are we talking about here? Pregnant woman with normal moods and anxiety or depression were given challenging mental exercises in a lab setting.

“All of the women show physiological signs of stress in response to the tests, but only the fetuses of depressed or anxious women display disturbances of their own.

"This difference suggests that these fetuses are already more sensitive to stress," Monk says. "Perhaps that's because of a genetic predisposition inherited from the parents. Or it could be because the fetuses' nervous systems are already being shaped by their mothers' emotional states."

Ok you say, I can buy that the fetus might react, after all it is responding to mom’s reactions. But…..

“The differences Monk has found among fetuses appear to persist after birth. And because basic physiological patterns like heart rate are associated with more general differences in temperament, Monk says, "it may be that the roots of temperamental variation go back to the womb."



It could even be the case that a pregnant woman's emotional state influences her offspring's later susceptibility to mental illness.”



That’s scary. I don’t think that I am clinically depressed or anxious, but I know I experience these emotions. I am a pretty high strung person, so it’s fair to say that I experienced anxiety with my other pregnancies. After all, my oldest was born when I was a first year resident and my youngest (so far) when I was a fellow. There was a lot of job related stress there, and especially with the first, really crazy hours.



This pregnancy has also had to endure its share of job related stress, as well as other types of stress. I have had a lot more sadness in this pregnancy though, for obvious reasons. I can’t eliminate my emotions, so I just have to hope that this baby is strong enough to withstand my mood swings and will still come out ok. Thank you Time for giving me something else to worry about. What’s that going to do to my baby?