Stress Early in Pregnancy Linked to Fewer Baby Boys
I saw this. Not sure what to think though. I thought stress = boys and stress for long periods of time (1yr )= girls?? But how can stress sway if your already pregnant? Does this mean if your stressed out during your 1st trimester your more likely to mis-carry your boy?
it seems that more studies are finding that stress when TTC equals more girls because the stress hormones themselves block other hormones
and purplesky - stress when pregnant would mean you're more likely to MC a baby boy because those are more vulnerable than baby girls
Stress doesn't sway blue. Different kinds of stress sway blue or pink depending on your psychological reaction to the stress and also how it affects your body.
If you're stressed but you feel confident and capable to control your situation and handle anything that comes yoru way and especially if you DO handle everything that comes your way successfully, that kind of stress raises testosterone and sways blue.
If you're stressed and feel that you have no control over the situation and that you are a victim of circumstance, that kind of stress lowers testosterone and sways pink.
This is true whether the stress lasts a lifetime or 3 weeks.
There are 140-160 boys conceived for every girl conceived, and so many boys are lost during pg that this number falls to 105-100 by birth. What this study seems to indicate is that stress AFTER conception, causes so many more boys to be lost early in pg that it actually alters the gender ratio itself.
That having been said, I do think it can help us sway because I personally believe that the mechanisms that come into play AFTER conception, probably have a "sister mechanism" that alters gender of the baby you conceive too, before sperm meets egg. So if you're chronically stressed, your body "knows" that a boy is going to have greater odds of being lost early in pg, SOMETHING has probably evolved that sways gender before conception. Producing healthy eggs and having miscarriages are "biologically expensive" for our bodies to do, so it is highly likely that we have evolved something that sways for gender before birth, to avoid these costs to our bodies whenever possible.
I don't know if this is worth adding at all, in regards to my two past miscarriages.
I was working in a high-stress work environment, quite a distance away from home (two hours to get to work and to get home from work, on multiple types of public transportation and I worked in a big city). I worked in a neonatal medical unit, with a lot of little babies... 22 (we did have some at times... though they never survived very long...) weekers and full-terms, with all sorts of problems, complications, issues, etcetera. I juggled three jobs within the job and switched between them. All three were stressful. It was fast paced and demanding. And my hours changed EVERY week (I worked a rota.) One week it would be shifts like 1pm to 11pm, and then there was the stress of getting out of work and the taxi being on time so I could somehow catch the last train of the NIGHT which was at 11:19pm! And then being alone on a train that late at night, full of drunk people.
Then some shift weeks would be 13 hour (!) shifts.
Etcetera, see where I'm going with this? I had two miscarriages while I worked there. I had some strange feeling it was due to the job, which despite my love of it, was beyond stressful for a variety of reasons.
I applied for a job at a hospital about 15 minutes away from me on the train. And it was a desk job. And it was only 30.5 hours a week... and no rota. Typical week.
I was pregnant within a month of working at the new job and had no problems at ALL!
So, who knows what stress can do, pre or post-conception...
I certainly always felt like stress was what contributed to my first two losses. I will never know, of course. It could have just been an unhealthy embryo both times. Or all of the above.
Gena, I think you're absolutely right. Doctors like to talk about chromosomal abnormalities but in reality, stats show that only something like 20% are chromosomal and the rest, doctors admit they have no idea what causes them.
Huge (((hugs))) and I so appreciate you sharing that with us so we have that info to help others. :heart: