According to a National Institutes of Health network study, women who experience financial, emotional or other personal stress in their lives while pregnant are more likely to have a stillbirth.
Researchers enrolled over 2000 women in the study between 2006 and 2008 and asked them questions related to stressful experiences they may have had while pregnant. Researchers found that 75 percent of women who had live births and 83 percent of women who had stillbirths had undergone a stressful event during pregnancy. They also found that the more stressful events reported, the higher the likelihood of experiencing a stillbirth. A woman who reported experiencing five or more stressful events was 2.5 times more likely to have a stillbirth. Furthermore, non-Hispanic black women were more likely to report experiencing stressful events, and they were also more likely to have had a stillbirth as compared to non-Hispanic white women and Hispanic women.
And some stressful events increased the likelihood of having a stillbirth more than others. These included losing a close friend or loved one, having heard her partner say he didn t want her to be pregnant, or if she or her partner had gone to jail in the year before the delivery.
Dr. Marian Willinger, co-author of the study and acting chief of the Pregnancy and Perinatology Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, says that this research, reinforces the need for health care providers to ask expectant mothers about what is going on in their lives, monitor stressful life events and to offer support as part of prenatal care.
ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross said, While this information needs to be confirmed in further studies, surely it is important for caregivers to know more about expectant moms personal lives. That being said, I wonder what sort of steps can be taken to reduce the risk of such a terrible event after a woman has such a stressful experience?