The only hope that expectant parents have for their unborn child is that the child will be healthy. So, in order to have a healthy baby, when is the best time to have a baby after marriage?
A recent study published in JAMA psychiatry by a team of experts from Harvard Medical School suggests that disharmony in family relationships during pregnancy is associated with a smaller occipital lobe and hippocampus in the fetus.
The occipital lobe is primarily responsible for vision in the brain.
The hippocampus is primarily responsible for the storage, conversion, and orientation of long-term memories, playing a crucial role in consolidating short-term memories and converting them into long-term memories.
This study was a population-based, multi-ethnic cohort study starting from the fetal stage, conducted from April 2002 to January 2006. At the start of the experiment, 8,879 pregnant women participated. After excluding those without partner data, those with missing family function data, and those with poor-quality child imaging data, the final sample consisted of 2,583 mother-child pairs.
Poor family functioning of the father or mother was measured using a family assessment scale. High-resolution structural neuroimaging data of 10-year-old children were collected using a single 3-T magnetic resonance imaging system. Children's emotional and behavioral problems were assessed using a child behavior checklist.
Unhealthy family relationships, also known as dysfunctional families, can manifest in, but are not limited to, severe conflicts among family members, lack of cohesion, and poor emotional and behavioral control.
The study results show that if a pregnant woman is in a dysfunctional family environment before birth, her child will have a smaller hippocampus and occipital lobe volume before early puberty.
Furthermore, after adjusting for confounding factors, it was suggested that hippocampal volume partially mediates the association between maternally reported poor family functioning and pre-adolescent problematic behaviors in children.
During pregnancy, in addition to poor family functioning affecting the baby's brain development, the mother's anxiety and stress are also related to the smaller hippocampus and amygdala in the baby's brain (the amygdala, as the brain's control and learning organization, plays an important role in generating, recognizing, and regulating emotions).
On January 3, 2020, a research team from the Brain Development Center at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., published a study in JAMA Netw Open, indicating that if pregnant women are constantly exposed to stress and anxiety during pregnancy, it can impair the development of the fetal hippocampus.
In this study, researchers recruited 119 pregnant women between January 1, 2016, and April 17, 2019. Pregnant women's stress, depression, and anxiety during pregnancy were measured using the following scales: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), SSAI Anxiety Scale, and Spielberg Trait Anxiety Scale (STAI).
Fetal brain MRI studies were conducted at two time points: 24 and 40 weeks of gestation. The main measurement parameters included three-dimensional measurements of the entire fetal brain, cortical gray matter, white matter volume, deep gray matter, cerebellum, brainstem, and hippocampus.
The study results showed that 27% of pregnant women reported experiencing stress, 26% frequently experienced anxiety, and 11% exhibited depressive symptoms. Furthermore, prenatal psychological stress in pregnant women was associated with a smaller left hippocampus in the fetus.
Prenatal stress in pregnant women can not only affect fetal brain development but also lead to lower birth weight. A 2014 study published in Psychol Med showed that prenatal anxiety and stress increase the risk of small gestational age.
Small gestational age (SGA) is a serious complication of pregnancy, generally associated with increasing gestational age. It increases the risk of perinatal mortality, birth hypoxia, neonatal death, impaired neurodevelopment, diabetes, and hypertension.
In this study, a total of 5,606 healthy pregnant women participated. The pregnant participants completed the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), SSAI Anxiety Scale, and Spielberg Trait Anxiety Scale (STAI) at 15 and 20 weeks of pregnancy, respectively.
Small for gestational age is defined as a birth weight below the 10th percentile, meaning the baby is smaller than many other babies of the same gestational age. Many babies typically weigh more than 5.27 pounds at 37 weeks of gestation, while babies weighing less than 4.99 pounds at birth are considered low birth weight.
The study results showed that when pregnant women are under a lot of stress at 20 weeks of gestation, the risk of low gestational age increases by 50%; and when pregnant women are particularly anxious at 20 weeks of gestation, the risk of low gestational age increases by 45%.
In conclusion, family relationships and the pregnant woman's mood are crucial to the baby's health during pregnancy, affecting not only the baby's birth weight but also the baby's brain development.
Previously, surrogacy trended on social media. Besides the fact that surrogacy is illegal in China, for the sake of the child's health, parents who are capable of having their own children should not resort to surrogacy. This is because outsiders cannot control or determine the behavior and mental state of a surrogate mother, and the mother's mental state during pregnancy significantly impacts the child's brain development and physical health.
Therefore, the best time to have a child is after marriage when the couple has a happy relationship and is free from stress and anxiety . In this situation, the pregnant woman can be at peace and in a good mood, and the child born will be healthier and smarter.
