whenever she gets stressed out; elevated levels of glucocorticoids thus become a regular part of her life. If she eventually gets
pregnant, she bathes her developing infant with the excess toxic stuff. The fetus develops a partially confused hypothalamus, pumping out more glucocorticoids, and the next-generation brain shrinks further. The vicious cycle continues. Excessive stress is contagious: You can get it from your kids, and you can give it to them, too.
Take back control
Clearly, too much stress is not good for pregnant women or their babies. For optimal development of your baby’s brain, you will want to exist in a less-stressed environment, especially in the last few months of pregnancy. You can’t completely upend your life, of course, which could be stressful on its own. But you can reduce your stress, with your spouse’s tender loving care. We’ll say much more about that in the next chapter. You can also begin identifying the areas in your life where you feel out of control, then deliberately form strategies that will allow you to take back control. In some cases, that means exiting the situation that is causing the stress. A temporary helping of courage will translate to a lifetime of benefit for your baby’s brain.
There are plenty of ways to actively practice general stress relief, too. At www.brainrules.net , we’ve listed a number of techniques known from the research literature to reduce stress. A big one is exercise, which has so many benefits that it is the subject of our fourth and final balancing act.
4. Exercise just the right amount
I am always amazed at the life cycle of wildebeests. They are best known for their spectacular annual migrations in the plains and open woodlands of Tanzania and Kenya, thousands upon thousands in hypnotic, constant motion. They move for two reasons. First and foremost, they are looking for new pastures. But they are also 600-pound steaks on legs; they have to keep moving because they are very popular with predators.
Given this urgency, the most interesting part of their life cycle is their pregnancy and birth. The gestation is nearly as long as a human’s, about 260 days, but the similarities end as soon as labor begins. The mother gives birth quickly. Unless there are complications, she also recovers quickly. So do the calves, typically rising to their feet—well, hooves—an hour after they’re born. They have to. Calves represent the herd’s future, but they are also the herd’s most vulnerable population, liable to become leopard food.
We, too, spent our evolutionary adolescence on these same savannahs, and we share many of the wildebeests same predator/prey problems. There are, you might imagine, major differences in birthing and parenting between wildebeests and humans. Women take a long time to recover from birth (it’s that big, overweight brain again, evolution’s secret weapon, forcing itself through a narrow birth canal), and their kids won’t be walking for almost a year. Nonetheless, evolutionary echoes imply that exercise was very much a part of our lives, including during pregnancy. Anthropologists think we walked as many as 12 miles per day.
Fit women have to push less
Does that mean exercise should be a part of human pregnancies? Evidence suggests the answer is yes. The first benefit is a practical one, having to do with labor. Many women report that giving birth is both the most exhilarating experience of their lives and the most painful. But women who exercise regularly have a much easier time giving birth than obese women. For fit women, the second stage of labor—that painful phase where you have to do a lot of pushing—lasts an average of 27 minutes. Physically unfit women had to push for almost an hour, some far longer. Not surprisingly, fit women perceived this stage as being far less painful.
And, because the pushing phase was so much shorter, their babies were less likely to experience brain damage from oxygen
pregnant, she bathes her developing infant with the excess toxic stuff. The fetus develops a partially confused hypothalamus, pumping out more glucocorticoids, and the next-generation brain shrinks further. The vicious cycle continues. Excessive stress is contagious: You can get it from your kids, and you can give it to them, too.
Take back control
Clearly, too much stress is not good for pregnant women or their babies. For optimal development of your baby’s brain, you will want to exist in a less-stressed environment, especially in the last few months of pregnancy. You can’t completely upend your life, of course, which could be stressful on its own. But you can reduce your stress, with your spouse’s tender loving care. We’ll say much more about that in the next chapter. You can also begin identifying the areas in your life where you feel out of control, then deliberately form strategies that will allow you to take back control. In some cases, that means exiting the situation that is causing the stress. A temporary helping of courage will translate to a lifetime of benefit for your baby’s brain.
There are plenty of ways to actively practice general stress relief, too. At www.brainrules.net , we’ve listed a number of techniques known from the research literature to reduce stress. A big one is exercise, which has so many benefits that it is the subject of our fourth and final balancing act.
4. Exercise just the right amount
I am always amazed at the life cycle of wildebeests. They are best known for their spectacular annual migrations in the plains and open woodlands of Tanzania and Kenya, thousands upon thousands in hypnotic, constant motion. They move for two reasons. First and foremost, they are looking for new pastures. But they are also 600-pound steaks on legs; they have to keep moving because they are very popular with predators.
Given this urgency, the most interesting part of their life cycle is their pregnancy and birth. The gestation is nearly as long as a human’s, about 260 days, but the similarities end as soon as labor begins. The mother gives birth quickly. Unless there are complications, she also recovers quickly. So do the calves, typically rising to their feet—well, hooves—an hour after they’re born. They have to. Calves represent the herd’s future, but they are also the herd’s most vulnerable population, liable to become leopard food.
We, too, spent our evolutionary adolescence on these same savannahs, and we share many of the wildebeests same predator/prey problems. There are, you might imagine, major differences in birthing and parenting between wildebeests and humans. Women take a long time to recover from birth (it’s that big, overweight brain again, evolution’s secret weapon, forcing itself through a narrow birth canal), and their kids won’t be walking for almost a year. Nonetheless, evolutionary echoes imply that exercise was very much a part of our lives, including during pregnancy. Anthropologists think we walked as many as 12 miles per day.
Fit women have to push less
Does that mean exercise should be a part of human pregnancies? Evidence suggests the answer is yes. The first benefit is a practical one, having to do with labor. Many women report that giving birth is both the most exhilarating experience of their lives and the most painful. But women who exercise regularly have a much easier time giving birth than obese women. For fit women, the second stage of labor—that painful phase where you have to do a lot of pushing—lasts an average of 27 minutes. Physically unfit women had to push for almost an hour, some far longer. Not surprisingly, fit women perceived this stage as being far less painful.
And, because the pushing phase was so much shorter, their babies were less likely to experience brain damage from oxygen
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