Are there risks to baby?

If you are asking, 'Does my depression mean risks to baby?' the short answer is definitely, 'YES IT DOES.'

That's not to scare you but to get you to realise that it is not only yourself that you are helping, but your unborn baby too, if you do something positive about your depression. You are NOT helping your unborn baby if you sit silently with your sadness and ride it out.

So here are the things to consider about the risks to baby when mum has pregnancy depression.

1. Risks for fetus 2. Risks for mental health later in life

risks for the growing fetus

Many large population studies have shown that women who admit to experiencing high levels of stress and low mood in pregnancy tend to have babies who are born earlier, and lighter for their birth age, than the population as a whole. We are not even talking, here, about the risks to baby of extreme prematurity and very low birth weight. Rather, babies born to stressed mothers may be born at, say, 36 weeks rather than 40 weeks, and for no apparent reason. While you may not think this is so very terrible, it is a fact that the last few weeks of pregnancy represent a time of rapid and intense fetal growth and organ (including brain) maturation; babies who are born even only a couple of weeks early are known to be more at risk for illness and other problems than their term counterparts. As to the issue of being born small for birth age: this is seen when babies experience any sort of stress in the womb. They then prioritise the maturation of their organs over general growth because something is signalling to them that there is a danger and they need to get ready for the world out there in case they need to get out quick!

Here's an example that demonstrates very well the effect of something unquestionably psychologically stressful on baby outcome: Following the September 11 World Trade Centre disaster in 2001, some on-the-ball researchers in New York immediately wondered what the effect of this tragedy would be on women, and their unborn babies, who were pregnant and who lived and worked close to the area. So they asked for birth outcome information from more than 300 women who were in their first or second trimester of pregnancy at the time of September 11 and who lived and/or worked within 2 miles of the area. They found that, in the group who lived close to the site, babies were born significantly earlier and significantly smaller than those born to women who lived further away. And in the group who were in their first trimester at the time of the attack there was an effect on baby head circumference too. The researchers adjusted all their calculations by taking into account other things that might have been contributing factors.

Now the WTC attack was a singularly stressful event that would have psychologically affected ANYONE closely exposed to it, but not all those women experienced clinically significant anxiety or depression. Proper depression can be seen, hormonally and chemically, as being a state of CHRONIC mental stress so it is therefore possible to see how depression in pregnancy could have those same risks to baby.

Developmental Psychologists can do tests on very newborn babies only a few days old to assess their behaviour. (I never knew how much a newborn baby could DO until I saw one of these tests being done!). They have found, in more than one study, that babies born to mums who were depressed in pregnancy can display 'irritability' and a kind of 'depression-like' behaviour from birth which suggests that mum's mood has somehow been the model for baby's mood in the womb, and posed risks to baby.

Back to top

risks for mental health later in life

For example, a study done in 2002 found that untreated anxiety experienced in pregnancy, as distinct from that experienced in the postnatal period, seemed to be related to children's emotional and behavioural problems at age 4 years. These included attention deficit and hyperactivity behaviours. Some of you who are reading this and have been depressed in a previous pregnancy might be saying, 'Oh yeah, I know what you are talking about; my little boy has difficulties with behaviour.' Many mothers that I have seen in practice have said that to me when I tell them about these findings.

Very recent research on a sample of mothers in South East London, UK, who were followed up from pregnancy until their children were 16 years old, seems to show that one of the risks to baby of depression in pregnancy is that the child is more likely to develop a depressive illness of their own by age 16. There is a greater likelihood that this will happen if mum experiences depression IN pregnancy, more so than for depression postnatally or for depression at other points during the child's life. The importance of that finding is that it shows that we can't just ascribe it to 'genes'. We can't just say 'it's hereditary' because then there ought to be no difference between WHEN the mother was depressed and whether or not her child developed depression. There MUST be something that happens in the child's in-utero development that makes depression in pregnancy most strongly linked to whether or not a child will develop depression. Click here to read a theoretical reason why this might be the case.

Yes, there are a lot of studies that show that POSTnatal depression has an effect on a child's later mental wellbeing; that's because risks to baby with postnatal depression has been more widely studied than with in-pregnancy depression. Also consider that 50% of women who have postnatal depression have already started to feel depressed in pregnancy.

For ways to minimize the risks to baby of pregnancy depression, click here.

Back to top