Can Stress Hurt Your Fetus? | Newsweek To Your Health

Anxiety for Two

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Email To A Friend

Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.

SPONSORED BY

What do you wish pregnant women knew?
I wish they would all have a healthy lifestyle before they get pregnant. Get into an exercise program and a balanced diet program. Take their prenatal vitamins with folic acid. Those are the three things they can do that are simple, straightforward, not expensive, not complicated. If they could come into pregnancy in good shape, with a balanced diet, that's probably the best preparation they can have.

My mother told me during her pregnancy with me, she and my father moved thirteen times, my father drank heavily on-and-off, and family members reported an abusive situation (that we well know carried on the rest of their married life). I was diagnoxed with paranoid schizophrenia as a youth--which has not stuck by me as an adult, but I do continue to need to take medcations since when I cut back I quickly develop symptoms of "pre-psychosis"--although this has all be so carefully controlled I have never been symptomatic of illness for the past twenty years or so. I also try to keep my life as low-stress as possible (imagine trying to do that in this day's world!) All of my sibs are affected by symptomatic problems (I managed to do graduate work inclinical psychology and am a registered nurse) and have had a highly successful life. This means that I must keep my distance from my family, to some extent, I am learning, after being completely out of my parents' lives for twenty-seven years and recently re-united. My family's dysfunction is so grave that they cannot avoic being destructive to me and one-another. I know for a fact that ALL my mother's pregnancies were extremely stressful, but so was her life--and expect that may be the case with many of the stressful pregnancies seen, even though in this article it is talking about one major event. The 1% hat produce schizophrenia are talking about MUCH stress ovver a longer period of time than one isolated event. (By the way, there was no known history of schizophrenia in my family--but my father, himself, is known to be very paranoid at times.)

Member Comments

- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: lisaanncross771 @ 10/09/2008 1:41:30 PM

Hmm this is pretty scary for me, when I was pregnant, My husband had cheated on me and the girl kept coming aorund and honking and causing so much stress for me...
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: bfpower @ 03/21/2008 7:47:08 PM

Interesting article, but I just have a hard time taking advice on caring for a "fetus." Call it a baby - that's what she or he is.
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: letha c. chamberlain @ 02/15/2008 2:45:11 AM

My mother told me during her pregnancy with me, she and my father moved thirteen times, my father drank heavily on-and-off, and family members reported an abusive situation (that we well know carried on the rest of their married life). I was diagnoxed with paranoid schizophrenia as a youth--which has not stuck by me as an adult, but I do continue to need to take medcations since when I cut back I quickly develop symptoms of "pre-psychosis"--although this has all be so carefully controlled I have never been symptomatic of illness for the past twenty years or so. I also try to keep my life as low-stress as possible (imagine trying to do that in this day's world!) All of my sibs are affected by symptomatic problems (I managed to do graduate work inclinical psychology and am a registered nurse) and have had a highly successful life. This means that I must keep my distance from my family, to some extent, I am learning, after being completely out of my parents' lives for twenty-seven years and recently re-united. My family's dysfunction is so grave that they cannot avoic being destructive to me and one-another. I know for a fact that ALL my mother's pregnancies were extremely stressful, but so was her life--and expect that may be the case with many of the stressful pregnancies seen, even though in this article it is talking about one major event. The 1% hat produce schizophrenia are talking about MUCH stress ovver a longer period of time than one isolated event. (By the way, there was no known history of schizophrenia in my family--but my father, himself, is known to be very paranoid at times.)