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Mom's mood: how it affects her baby
Pregnant women often feel stressed, and many women develop outright depression either during their pregnancy or after their babies are born. But what is the effect of this on their babies' development? ANNERINE ROOS reports.
 Pregnant women often feel very anxious, depressed or stressed. They also tend to rate themselves as being worse off in terms of remembering things, concentrating, and keeping their focus while they are pregnant. This partly results from hormone escalations and bodily changes, but may also be influenced by stress factors in their environment.
Research has already demonstrated that psychosocial stress - stress related to one's psychological state and social environment - may significantly affect not only the mother's wellbeing, but also the physical development of the child she is carrying. Babies of stressed mothers tend to be born earlier and are underweight, and specialised medical care is often needed to ensure that they become healthy.
After birth, the first few months are also crucial for the infant in terms of all aspects of development, including the physical, cognitive and emotional systems. Infants are, for instance, able to react to emotional expressions in the first month after birth.
If the mother's stress is expressed in prolonged bouts of depression, the mom's energy and interest levels are sapped. Her resulting inability to provide much-needed loving affection and care may hamper attempts to improve the health of the infant, and the infant may suffer even more.
Research has shown that infants, since they are perceptive to emotional displays even when only days old, may be affected by the stresses in their environment to such an extent that they are more likely to develop psychiatric conditions and even degenerative mental illnesses. In fact, being subjected to external stress factors has been shown to kill brain cells!
But what about the mental and emotional effects of stress on a baby before it's even born? Before birth, a pregnant mother is her child's total environment. Any stress experienced by the mother is more than likely experienced as an environmental stress by her child.
The MRC/US Anxiety and Stress Disorders Research Unit have set out to discover how, and to what extent, a pregnant mother's wellbeing affects the perceptions, mental ability and emotional stability of her unborn child.
Ultimately, the earlier doctors are able to detect a problem with the brain development of a foetus, and the better they understand the relationship between foetal brain development and the mother's wellbeing, the quicker and more appropriately they can act to avoid future problems.
But, even more groundbreaking, is that this research project aims to predict the infants' mental and emotional development after birth by looking at what happens during pregnancy: their brain development, psychosocial factors affecting the mother, and the mother's ability to cope with stress and difficult emotions during pregnancy.
Pregnant mothers in their first trimester are being approached at a local pregnancy clinic, and they - as well as their children - will be followed until a year after the birth.
The mothers will have to complete various questionnaires during their first, second and third trimester, aimed at measuring their mood and mental state. Blood samples will be taken and salivary levels of cortisol - a hormone which is released when the brain is triggered by stressors - will be measured to determine their stress level, as well as other biological changes. Women will also undergo an ultrasound scanning at each visit.
In addition, the women's visual recognition memory will be assessed to shed light on their way of interpreting or reacting to emotions and events, as well as their selective attention to stimuli: if a woman is highly stressed or depressed, it seems that more attention is given to negative cues in the environment, such as criticism, bad news or small irritations.
Infants' emotional memory and temperament will also be assessed four, eight and twelve months after delivery. Temperament is an important factor: one infant might be exposed to high stress but have no future emotional or cognitive difficulty, while another may be very sensitive to negative input and consequently struggle at school later on, due to problems with managing emotions and keeping focus.
Finally, the project aims to shed new light on strategies for care to improve the general mental and emotional well-being of the mother and the infant during pregnancy.
How to cope
Studies have shown that women who are supported by their partner, friends and family cope better with stress during their pregnancy. Both they and their babies also suffer fewer complications than those who feel alone.
Many women, however, don't have a partner or family who are supportive. If you are in this situation, your clinic sister, GP or gynaecologist can provide you with support. There are also organisations, like the Post Natal Depression Support Association of SA (PNDSA), LifeLine and La Leche League on breastfeeding, who can provide information and support for you during pregnancy and after your baby is born.
Remember, it is not normal to feel consistently down and stressed when you are pregnant. If you feel this way, or if you know someone who is pregnant and feels like this, get advice from one of the organisations mentioned.
For more information on the study, contact Dr Bavi Vythilingum on (021) 938-9659, or bv@sun.ac.za. Annerine Roos is the co-ordinator at the Mental Health Information Centre. Contact her on Tel (021) 938 9121 or aroos@sun.ac.za.
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