How To Manage Stress During Pregnancy

It can be hard to avoid stress when you are anticipating one of life’s most exciting and challenging events – having a baby. Holding down a job and running a gauntlet of prenatal medical tests while juggling other duties can pile on more strain.

Obstetricians and researchers are trying some new approaches to helping pregnant women reduce stress, as reported in my WSJ column on Wednesday.

Research has found that the basic, garden-variety stressors of daily life-–traffic delays, work deadlines and so on–typically don’t pose a risk during pregnancy for healthy women. Chronic strain, however-–nonstop stress of the kind caused by racism, poverty or serious family problems–-is linked in research with an increased risk of preterm birth or cognitive delays in babies.

The most vulnerable time is the first trimester, when extreme stress or catastrophic events have been linked to a higher risk of premature delivery. Also, “pregnancy-specific anxiety”–mothers’ worrying excessively about potential problems with fetal development, miscarriage or childbirth–-is linked to slower development in babies at 12 months, a recent study shows.

A powerful antidote for all kinds of stress, researchers say, is social support–kind words, nurturing friends, and surroundings that prompt smiles and laughter. A 2008 Swiss study found pregnant women who reported more “daily uplifts,” such as smiling, laughing and receiving compliments, were less likely to react negatively to stress.

Partly to provide such support, more doctors are recommending a new kind of group care for expectant moms. In a prenatal-care model called Centering Pregnancy, 10 or 12 expectant mothers who are all at the same stage of a normal pregnancy gather in two-hour sessions, scheduled with the same frequency as the customary one-on-one prenatal checkup.

The women first get private screenings for blood pressure, weight and other indicators, then gather for discussion and Q&A sessions with a doctor or midwife. Obstetricians say the groups are fun, and encourage better nutrition and self-care among participants; scholarly studies also show they reduce the rate of preterm births. One participant I interviewed said gathering with other mothers “helped me to relax.”

Personally, I would love to have had group care during pregnancy. My husband and I relished getting together for childbirth training with other expectant moms and dads, and meeting as a group for prenatal care would have been another welcome source of support.

Also, researchers re urging women to start building their own “stress resiliency” even before they get pregnant–a habit of staying calm and optimistic and reaching out for support from others when needed.

source: blogs.wsj