The Value of Touch

"We also learned that we could predict postpartum depression by asking, "Do you and your partner want this baby?"  From our own research, we now know that postpartum depression, affecting as much as 80 percent of women, has terrible effects on newborns.  Babies born to depressed mothers show inferior performance on the Brazelton Neonatal Behavior Assessment, an examination that assesses the newborn's response to visual, auditory, social, and nonsocial stimulation, and the newborn's motor behavior, self-quieting, and reflexes.  These newborns are also less attentive and less responsive to faces, and their perception of auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli is less developed.  In addition, their EEG activity is similar to that of their adult mothers.  The differences at this early stage probably derive from these babies having been exposed to their mother's high levels of stress hormones during pregnancy, because at birth the newborns have the same high stress-hormone levels as their mothers.  After their birth, the depressed mothers touched their newborns less often than the nondepressed mothers.  When a mother's depression continues, the infant's growth and development are delayed.  If the mother is still depressed six months after the delivery, the infant typically weighs less than the norm, and at one year has lower Bayley mental and motor scale scores."  (Touch by Tiffany Field, 2001, p. 42-43)