hospital for your regular checkups—God forbid if you went into labor—you were stressed out of your mind. And so, it turned out, was your infant. The effects of that storm could be seen on their brains years later.
How do we know that? A group of researchers decided to study the effects of this natural disaster on babies in the womb—then follow the children as they grew older and entered the Canadian education system. The result is scary. By the time these “ice storm” children were 5, their behaviors differed markedly from children whose mothers hadn’t experienced the storm. Their verbal IQs and language development appeared stunted, even when the parents education, occupation, and income were taken into account. Was the mother’s stress the culprit? The answer turned out to be yes.
Maternal stress can profoundly influence prenatal development. We didn’t used to think so. For a while, we weren’t even sure if mom’s stress hormones could reach her baby. But they do, and that has long-lasting behavioral consequences, especially if the woman is stressed, severely or chronically or both, in those magic, hypersensitive last months of pregnancy. What kind of consequences?
If you are severely stressed during pregnancy:
• It can change the temperament of your child: Infants become more irritable, less consolable.
• It can lower your baby’s IQ: The average decline is about 8 points in certain mental and motor inventories measured in a baby’s first year of life. Using David Wechsler’s 1944 schema, that spread can be the difference between “average IQ” and “bright normal”.
• It can inhibit your baby’s future motor skills, attentional states, and ability to concentrate, differences still observable at age 6. It can damage your baby’s stress-response system.
• Stress can even shrink the size of your baby’s brain.
A review of more than 100 studies in various economically developed countries confirm that these powerful, negative effects on prenatal brain development are cross-cultural. David Laplante, lead author of the ice-storm study, said in a somewhat understated fashion: “We
suspect that exposure to high levels of stress may have altered fetal neurodevelopment, thereby influencing the expression of the children’s neurobehavioral abilities in early childhood.”
Is this stressing you out? Luckily, not all stresses are created equal. Moderate stress in small amounts, the type most women feel in a typical pregnancy, actually appears to be good for infants. (Stress tends to get people moving, and we think that enriches the baby’s environment.) The womb is a surprisingly hearty structure, and both it and its tiny passenger are well-equipped to ride out the typical stressors of pregnancy. It is just not prepared for a sustained assault. So, how can you tell the brain-damaging stress from the typical, benign, even mildly positive stress?
3 toxic types of stress
Researchers have isolated three toxic types. Their common characteristic: that you feel out of control over the bad stuff coming at you. As stress moves from moderate to severe, and from acute to chronic, this loss of control turns catastrophic and begins to affect baby. Here are the bad types of stress:
• Too frequent. Chronic, unrelenting stress during pregnancy hurts baby brain development. The stress doesn’t necessarily have to be severe. The poison is sustained, long-term exposure to stressors that you perceive are out of your control. These can include an overly demanding job, chronic illness, lack of social support, and poverty.
• Too severe. A truly severe, tough event during pregnancy can hurt baby brain development. It doesn’t have to be an ice storm. Such an event often involves a relationship: marital separation, divorce, the death of a loved one (especially the husband). Severe stress can also include the loss of a job or a criminal assault such as rape. The key issue, once again, is a loss of
How do we know that? A group of researchers decided to study the effects of this natural disaster on babies in the womb—then follow the children as they grew older and entered the Canadian education system. The result is scary. By the time these “ice storm” children were 5, their behaviors differed markedly from children whose mothers hadn’t experienced the storm. Their verbal IQs and language development appeared stunted, even when the parents education, occupation, and income were taken into account. Was the mother’s stress the culprit? The answer turned out to be yes.
Maternal stress can profoundly influence prenatal development. We didn’t used to think so. For a while, we weren’t even sure if mom’s stress hormones could reach her baby. But they do, and that has long-lasting behavioral consequences, especially if the woman is stressed, severely or chronically or both, in those magic, hypersensitive last months of pregnancy. What kind of consequences?
If you are severely stressed during pregnancy:
• It can change the temperament of your child: Infants become more irritable, less consolable.
• It can lower your baby’s IQ: The average decline is about 8 points in certain mental and motor inventories measured in a baby’s first year of life. Using David Wechsler’s 1944 schema, that spread can be the difference between “average IQ” and “bright normal”.
• It can inhibit your baby’s future motor skills, attentional states, and ability to concentrate, differences still observable at age 6. It can damage your baby’s stress-response system.
• Stress can even shrink the size of your baby’s brain.
A review of more than 100 studies in various economically developed countries confirm that these powerful, negative effects on prenatal brain development are cross-cultural. David Laplante, lead author of the ice-storm study, said in a somewhat understated fashion: “We
suspect that exposure to high levels of stress may have altered fetal neurodevelopment, thereby influencing the expression of the children’s neurobehavioral abilities in early childhood.”
Is this stressing you out? Luckily, not all stresses are created equal. Moderate stress in small amounts, the type most women feel in a typical pregnancy, actually appears to be good for infants. (Stress tends to get people moving, and we think that enriches the baby’s environment.) The womb is a surprisingly hearty structure, and both it and its tiny passenger are well-equipped to ride out the typical stressors of pregnancy. It is just not prepared for a sustained assault. So, how can you tell the brain-damaging stress from the typical, benign, even mildly positive stress?
3 toxic types of stress
Researchers have isolated three toxic types. Their common characteristic: that you feel out of control over the bad stuff coming at you. As stress moves from moderate to severe, and from acute to chronic, this loss of control turns catastrophic and begins to affect baby. Here are the bad types of stress:
• Too frequent. Chronic, unrelenting stress during pregnancy hurts baby brain development. The stress doesn’t necessarily have to be severe. The poison is sustained, long-term exposure to stressors that you perceive are out of your control. These can include an overly demanding job, chronic illness, lack of social support, and poverty.
• Too severe. A truly severe, tough event during pregnancy can hurt baby brain development. It doesn’t have to be an ice storm. Such an event often involves a relationship: marital separation, divorce, the death of a loved one (especially the husband). Severe stress can also include the loss of a job or a criminal assault such as rape. The key issue, once again, is a loss of
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