Imagine for a moment that it’s movie night, and you’re 8 months pregnant. You want to watch Fantastic Mr. Fox, but your husband votes for Marley & Me. How do you choose? Well, according to new research, you might want to let your baby-to-be have a vote, because s/he will respond to Mom’s emotions.
Researchers in Japan recently studied a group of pregnant women to see how their emotions affected their unborn child. (You can read more about the study in the NewScientist article found here.) Ten subjects viewed an uplifting clip from The Sound of Music and a sad clip from The Champ. The women listened to the movies through headphones “to ensure that only the effect of their emotions, not the sounds, were being measured,” since a fetus gains the ability to hear by the last trimester.
The result? Babies-to-be moved their arms significantly more than normal (“normal” was measured by having the subjects watch a neutral clip) when Mom viewed the “happy” clip and less when the “sad” clip was on. The researcher theorized that the “sad” movie caused a greater release of the “fight or flight” hormone, thus diverting blood away from the fetus. As a result, the babies-to-be conserved their blood supply for their heart and lungs rather than their limbs, limiting arm movement.
