Impact of stress during pregnancy

Feeling stressed is common during pregnancy because pregnancy is a time of many changes. Your family life, your body and your emotions are changing. You may welcome these changes, but they can add new stresses to your life. High levels of stress that continue for a long time may cause health problems, like high blood pressure and heart disease. During pregnancy, stress can increase the chances of having a baby who is preterm (born before 37 weeks of pregnancy) or a low-birth weight baby. Babies born too soon or too small are at increased risk for health problems. The causes of stress are different for every woman, but some common causes include:
Dealing with the discomforts of pregnancy, like morning sickness, constipation, being tired or having a backache. Changes in your hormones, which can cause your mood to change. Mood swings can make it harder to handle stress. Feeling worried about what to expect during labor and birth or how to take care of your baby. If you work, you may have to manage job tasks and prepare your team for when you take maternity leave. Problems with your partner or your family, or feeling as if you do not having enough support. We don’t completely understand how stress affects pregnancy. Certain stress-related hormones may play a role in causing certain pregnancy complications. Serious or long-lasting stress may affect your immune system, which protects you from infection. This can increase your risk for infections, and certain infections can increase the risk of preterm birth.
Other ways stress can cause pregnancy problems include:
Normal pregnancy discomforts, like trouble sleeping, body aches and morning sickness may feel even worse with stress. You may have problems eating, like not eating enough or eating too much. This can make you underweight or cause you to gain too much weight during pregnancy. It also may increase your risk of having gestational diabetes and pre-term labor. Stress may lead to high blood pressure during pregnancy. This puts you at risk of a serious high blood pressure condition called preeclampsia, preterm birth and having a low-birth weight infant. Stress also may affect how you respond to certain situations. Many parents worry that stress may lead to miscarriage, which is the death of a baby before the 20th week of pregnancy. More research is needed to understand how stress may contribute to miscarriage.