Q

I’ve heard that a mother’s emotions and mental state can affect her baby in utero. I’m wondering if there are techniques a pregnant woman can use when dealing with anxiety, stress, or mood swings to keep her baby’s environment as healthy as possible.

A

It’s a great idea to keep our baby’s environment as healthy as possible — before, during, and after birth! In fact, we’d think that raising a baby, toddler, child, or teen in a stress-free environment would be the most ideal option.

Apparently, however, Hashem thinks otherwise. He is the One Who creates situations that people find challenging, stressful and even traumatizing — and He doesn’t put this on hold during the childbearing years. Of course, it’s up to each person to reduce their stress levels by increasing emunah and bitachon, but this takes a lifetime of work. In general, those in the childbearing years are still in the early stages of spiritual mastery and therefore still do feel significant amounts of stress.

Therefore, before we explore strategies for increasing emotional stability and well-being, let’s just consider the possibility that a mother’s negative emotions may not be completely contraindicated in pregnancy. It’s even possible that her sadness, despair, fear, and rage actually inoculate her baby, building up a sort of stress resistance over time.

To better understand this concept, let’s consider the practice of conditioning a baby to fall asleep in a bright and noisy room. If the baby is successfully trained to sleep under these conditions, the child will be able to fall asleep anywhere, at any time. Another baby, put to sleep only where conditions are ideal (dark and quiet) may not be able to settle down in an environment that isn’t “just right.”