STRESS LESS!

Stress is bad for you – but how bad is it for your baby?

- MARGOT BERTELSMANN

Pregnancy is stressful. You’re growing the little person who’ll have the most profound effect on your life ever. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

So a certain amount of anxiety is only to be expected – and can even work in your favour. After all, knowing how important it is will motivate you to make responsible choices about your health, fitness, diet and work-life balance.

But bad stress has been shown to increase the risk of preterm delivery and is a contributing factor in low-birthweight babies. It could even affect your baby’s personality and academic performance in the future.

STRESS CAN CAUSE LABOUR

When you’re stressed, your white blood cell count can decrease. These cells fight off infection. Pregnant women’s immune systems are already less strong (your body cleverly weakens its infection fighters to reduce the risk of the body rejecting the growing baby as an alien invader). If the foetus gets an infection in the womb – a medical emergency – your stress really could make your baby very sick indeed.

A study in Toronto on rats found that “stress across generations becomes powerful enough to shorten pregnancy length in rats,” says Dr Gerlinde Metz in the journal BMCMedicine. The effect became more and more noticeable with each new generation of stressed mothers. The researchers speculated that elevated stress in humans over years could also lead to more preterm births.