Intense Prenatal Stress Can Affect Newborns, But Don't Stress About It, Study Says

Just one MORE annoying things the "pundits" and/or "experts" visit upon women at the time of motherhood. Yanno, if we all listened to all their "advice" we would be dead. They offer ridiculous crap that makes no sense. One would say you have to have your baby attached to you as you go on your day, the other says that moms have to work outside their homes and ditch their babies in daycare to promote mental health/whatever. Moms, please do as you please and do NOT listen to their incessant drivel. Its about you and YOUR child, not the moronical statements from "experts."

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pure drivel.

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Thanks! I am going to use this as a reason to make more spa days! lol

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Sounds to me like another "pregnancy is a disease" type article. My husband is in the army and was deployed from the 9th week of my pregnancy all the way to the week before my son was born and he was perfectly healthy. I had many pregnant friends whose husband's were deployed....all their babies..HEALTHY! My sister had her baby a few months after her abusive husband (soon to be ex) choked her to the point she passed out, locked her in a bathroom with no light, and held a knife to her belly....baby is HEALTHY! I have never been more stressed in my life than I was while pregnant. Pregnancy in itself is a stressful and wonderful time. I'm sure these sick babies could be linked to other things too, not just a stressed out mother.

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Actually, a pregnant woman's stress definitely affects the child for life. I know a mother who was beaten up very badly by her husband when she was pregnant. Physical abuse by the man with whom a woman signed up for a love relationship causes an immense amount of stress hormones to be released. Then she left him. She had a 5 year old and another baby in addition to being pregnant. Leaving one's husband while so vulnerable during a time that women didn't leave their abusers (the 1950s) is stressful. She ended up going back to the man because her family talked her into it. (They did not have much money.) The baby was born and was incorrigible. At age 3, he became a beater of his older brother, who was just 14 months older than he. He had learning disabilities, got in trouble at school, was sexually promiscuous at a very early age, did heavy drugs at an early age, but then, through very hard work and some lucky breaks, became successful. As it turns out, this man has every marker of a sociopath, can attach to people, but can not bond well (throws people out like used tissue), and he takes pleasure in being cruel to others. His older brother is a paranoid schizophrenic. I believe that the stress that their mother endured at the hands of her very abusive husband, while the children were very young and not even born yet, was the trigger to tip whatever genetic predisposition they had, into these full blown mental disorders. Be clear that one's genes are not one's destiny. There is a neurophysiologist at UC Irvine who has studied the brains of psychopaths and serial killers for 20 years, who, when he scanned his own brain, discovered that he, himself, had the brain deficits of a serial killer, but yet, he is not one. Instead he is a loving husband and father and a productive member of society. Why is he not? No abuse in his family of origin, unlike the family I described above. Nurture can override nature. Unfortunately, those with bad genes often behave badly too, so it's impossible to unfurl the nature from the nurture in order to determine definitively which is causal. So, in conclusion, this is not bunk. It is very real. Scientists throughout the ages have had trouble bringing new knowledge into acceptance. The faster we accept the reality that mothers should be loved and cherished, instead of abused, so that their babies can grow into healthy, integrated, other-centered, and productive adults one day, the faster our world will get better. Domestic violence against mothers is a terrible, terrible thing.

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I think this is total bullsh*t. Listen, years ago, pregnant women worked and worked hard. They had to help run the farm, working up until the baby came. I'm talking milking cows, grinding wheat for bread, churning their own butter, hauling wood and much, much more. And then, THEN, the had to chew on a piece of friggin' leather while giving birth at home with no doctor, no midwife, no episiotomy to make the baby's head bursting through easier, not even a shot of whiskey. Today? Pregnant women get special parking spaces right next to the handicapped, use pregnancy as an excuse to GET OUT of doing work, like loading the dishwasher, and get 4 months off work after the baby is delivered in a crisp, clean hospital bed by a specialist and a labor coach to help her know when to push because her epidural has the "discomfort" blocked.

Give me a break. The stress of pregnancy making baby sick my ass. Just another way to try to make us victims from the womb, to the tomb. "Hi, my name is Billy, and it all started when I was in the womb."

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