Does arguing while pregnant affect babies?

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During pregnancy, partners sometimes feel anxiety, fear, frustration and anger. This can happen for several reasons, including stress, worry, pressure, frustration and confusion from juggling preparations for the baby’s arrival, money, work demands, and more. It is also natural to feel worried because pregnancy can lead to stronger emotions too.

Feelings like fear, frustration and anger are common in couples. But what matters is the response to them. Getting angry, yelling or fighting by a father-to-be is not going to solve this problem. When such stressors become more common or intense, they can hurt the unborn baby.

Researchers from the Kochi Medical School in Japan found that verbal abuse during pregnancy is linked to an almost 50 per cent increase in the risk of a baby being born with hearing problems. The stress that comes from verbal abuse could cause major problems for the unborn baby in the future.

In addition, children aged 12 months and above, who are exposed to verbal abuse, were found to be more likely to experience issues with auditory function. One of their theories to explain why this may be is that loud voices, not belonging to the mother, cause discomfort to the unborn baby. This discomfort in turn hinders the baby’s development of the hearing system.

Getting angry, yelling or fighting are all forms of stress. Professor Chris Aimakhu, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, in a remark, declared that when they become persistent, it is bad in pregnancy. According to him, although stress can lead to early delivery, it does not necessarily cause premature delivery.

He stated that early contraction due to strong emotion, for example, can happen in a woman whose delivery date is close but the husband keeps on travelling, or who is anxious about her family’s bad financial situation or even a health challenge. This can cause her to fall into labour.

“Those are anxiety-related symptoms − she is anxious. If she does not take control of herself, she can go into labour. She can deliver and all those things are coming to play. So, it is psychological,” Professor Aimakhu said.

Dr Jibril Abdulmalik, also a consultant psychiatrist at the University College Hospital (UCH), said anybody can come down with anxiety and depression, including pregnant women. He added that such pregnant women may experience high levels of anxiety, depression or worry during antenatal care are always referred for evaluation and treatment by a psychiatrist

“Anxiety is common with pregnancy and it can have negative consequences. Anxiety during pregnancy is usually said to be U-shaped − very high in the first trimester, comes down in the second trimester and is high again in the third trimester.

“Why in the first trimester? They are worried: Will this pregnancy stay? They are nauseated, not sleeping well, and uncomfortable. By the second trimester, everything else has calmed down. So, it has come down.

“But by the third trimester, they worry if the labour will go smoothly; if their babies will come out alive or have abnormalities. They are worried about having complications during childbirth, including excess bleeding and dying during childbirth. So, it is common with pregnancy,” Abdulmalik said.

Experts also believe that violence during pregnancy can cause miscarriage, a higher chance of premature birth and newborn death. Violence can also cause a pregnant partner’s stress hormones to rise. These stress hormones go through the placenta to the growing baby. They can hurt the baby’s development.

They declared that verbal abuse during pregnancy is more likely to cause a woman to experience postnatal depression than physical and sexual violence during pregnancy. And it can also impact the incidence of maternal abuse behaviour towards children.

Of course, environmental stress such as that caused by poverty, systemic racism, or domestic violence and abuse can cause more problems than stress alone. For example, poverty and systemic racism can negatively impact pregnancy because they place unfair and burdensome barriers between pregnant people and access to quality health care, nutrition, safe housing, mental health services, paid parental leave, and child-care services —and these factors compound.

Stress is complicated, and experts do not entirely understand how it affects a person’s overall health. But there does appear to be a link between high levels of stress and certain health conditions and pregnancy complications.

For example, chronic stress can increase blood pressure and cause hypertension, potentially putting a pregnant person at risk for preeclampsia2 and preterm labour. Also, high levels of stress can suppress your immune system, making you more susceptible to infection.

It can also negatively affect sleep, putting at risk for sleep deprivation that can lead to accidents and injury. Finally, excess stress can exacerbate common pregnancy complaints like morning sickness and back pain.

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