March 31, 2004 -- A woman's feelings about her pregnancy may af
March 31, 2004 -- A woman's feelings about her pregnancy may affect her child's health.
That news comes from a study of 160 pregnant women by Robert D. Keeley, MD, MPH, of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and colleagues.
When pregnant women say the father of their child is happier about the pregnancy than they are, Keeley's team found, they are 10 times more likely to have a low-birth weight child. They found this effect even after taking into account other factors that might affect birth weight.
"This birth outcome study is the first of which we are aware to incorporate mothers' perceptions of the father's intendedness and happiness to confirm prospectively that maternal unhappiness about a pregnancy is associated with low birth weight," Keeley and colleagues write.
The study findings appear in the March/April issue of Annals of Family Medicine.
The women in the study attended a community health center in a medium-sized Western city. Most of the people served by the clinic are low-income, predominantly Latina whites. Of the 160 women, nine gave birth to children with low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds).
The women filled out questionnaires on how they felt about their pregnancy, and about how they thought their partners felt about it. Answers were ranked on a 1 to 10 scale; women who ranked their partners five points above themselves were considered less happy.
Women who considered themselves less happy than their partners were 10 times more likely to have a low-birth weight child. There was also a trend for women who ranked themselves as unhappy to have lower-birth weight babies.
The findings must be confirmed by larger studies, Keeley and colleagues note. However, they suggest that if women's attitudes toward their pregnancies can be improved -- without stigmatizing them -- it might be possible to reduce their babies' birth risk.
SOURCE: Keeley, R.D. Annals of Family Medicine, March/April 2004; vol 2: pp 145-149.
