How a Pregnant Mother Influences Her Baby

Carrying a child is an exciting time and you certainly want what is best for your baby. In fact, you have been planning and preparing for just that these past months. However, what you might be overlooking is the fact that everything you do can influence the development of your growing child. Because your bodies are so intimately connected, your own lifestyle affects your baby as well. What things contribute most to the influence that you have on your baby and what should be keep in mind?

Watch Your Emotions
The emotional environment that you surround yourself with can influence your unborn baby. Things like emotions and stress generate bodily responses in yourself; this, in turn, causes chemical reactions to happen in your body. Those reactions, called neurohormones, pass through the placenta and influence your baby. If you have a lot of fear, stress or negativity during your pregnancy, this can negatively affect the development of your baby. This may show up later in life with issues like poor behavior control or cognitive problems such as ADD. There is also a recognized connection with things like colic. At the other end of the spectrum, more positive emotions can lead to healthier development and easier bonding upon your baby's birth. Baby's born to mothers who were more peaceful during their gestation tend to also be more relaxed and peaceful in their personalities.

Environmental Impact
Now that you know that your emotions can either help or harm your unborn child, what else should you be doing to increase the positive influence that you have on your baby? Studies suggest that what is going on in the external environment can also influence your little one. In fact, doctors at Mayo Clinic have studied the impact of sound on a growing baby and found some exciting information: according to research, growing babies can both hear and respond to sound as early as 18 weeks gestation. If you ensure that there is a lot of positive sound input during your pregnancy, such as classical music and the calming voices of parents, preliminary findings indicate that language development may be positively impacted; motor skills also show improvement.

What Are You Consuming?
Your baby is completely reliant upon you for all life-sustaining processes, including nourishment and oxygen. For this reason, what you are putting into your body is a critical influence on your baby. For example, mothers who smoke give birth to baby's that have lower birth weights and are more prone to breathing difficulties; they have been deprived of sufficient oxygen during their critical developmental stages. In fact, even if mom doesn't smoke, just being around a smoker regularly can increase your babies risk of suffering from SIDS.

Other aspects of your health and diet can influence your baby as well. Studies indicate that overweight mothers produce babies who are extremely sensitive to the effects of a high fat diet, leading to a greater chance of obesity later in life. The quality of the mother's diet also becomes the foundation for all other developmental stages during gestation, affecting proper bone growth, brain development and much more.

Because there is such a close connection between a pregnant mom and her growing baby, you really can't be too careful. Do the best that you can to create a healthy and positive environment for your precious package, watching not only your diet, but your emotional state as well. After all, you have more influence over your baby during this time than probably ever will again.