Unborn babies not only can hear sounds but they are highly sensitive to the mother’s psychological state as well, a recent research discovered.
How mother’s emotional state affects the baby
It’s known for a long time that smoking and drinking during pregnancy are highly damaging to an unborn child, starting from early stages. Other emotions people experience are also accompanied by different chemicals that the mother shares with an unborn baby via placenta, so scientists decided to see if there was a connection between a mother’s psychological state and baby’s health.
American scientists from the University of California-Irvine looked at how mother’s emotional states were linked to her baby’s development after birth, and discovered a strong and surprising pattern.
Some mothers were depressed during pregnancy and others suffered from depression afterward. Both of these factors were negatively affecting the baby’s development, but only if the mother’s emotional state changed after the birth.
In other words, kids of mothers who were depressed before and after the birth did alright, just as the babies of mothers who didn’t suffer depression. But if a mother experienced depression before or after birth only, then it was negatively affecting the child.
It was the change in the emotional state of the mother that was the most damaging to the infant, the study discovered.
This doesn’t mean that a mother who was deeply unhappy during pregnancy shouldn’t get psychological help to feel better, but rather the drive to ensure that mothers are assisted before the birth as well, to ensure they feel well not only physically but emotionally.
Scientists believe that an unborn human is an active participant in his or her own development, being able to collect information, which is used after the birth. The messages that a baby receives are coming mostly from the mother.
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