Preparing the canvas for infant mental health – how early can it be?

• 13 June 2017
• Jane Evans
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When should we start to be concerned about an infant’s mental health?

Thus far in infant mental health week #imhw, there have been some great posts on social media about ‘in uetro’ mental health. This is very reassuring as I am sure that if prospective parents were aware of the significance of the time their baby is developing in the womb, then it would help them focus on it in a different way.

The brain is believed to start forming in the womb at around 3 weeks after conception. Therefore, the sounds, tastes, touches and hormones the developing brain and body systems spend time forming and growing in shape their stress responses, among other things.

If a pregnant woman lives with high levels of ongoing stress, anxiety and/or depression the hormones associated with these will pass through the developing child. Likewise alcohol, loud voices, big emotional shocks, fear, injuries to the body and any sustained stress.

Many of these are unavoidable and finding out that what happened during pregnancy can link to a child’s mental and physical well-being and behaviour can cause a real ‘guilt cascade’ for any parent. However, knowledge is a powerful thing and can also mean a parent or carer then moves forward understanding they have anxiety and so does their little one so they need to access support and learn ways to reduce this for them both.

The canvas can be prepared before pregnancy 

When pregnancy is a planned life-event then it is a great opportunity to start to focus on the parents-to-be mental and physical well-being as this can have such a pre-pregnancy benefit! It is an important time to take a ‘stock check’ of anxiety levels and to consider, in a compassionate way. Any trauma . Either one-off shocks, or ongoing daily trauma, such as having grown up with domestic abuse or violence, having highly anxious parents, a history of family trauma, parents with mental illness or substance dependency, parents who were emotionally distant or cold.

A bit like preparing for an expedition, or to run a marathon, or to build a house, the foundational preparation will make all of the difference to the experience! For parents-to-be, even prior to conception, it will be of real benefit to their much wanted ‘infant-to-be’ if they begin to look at relaxation, and to fully commit to it!

Preparing both adults, or the adult, to have a calm nervous system and more relaxed brain will mean that when conception occurs this is the chemical-mix an infants body and brain will experience the majority of the time. It does NOT need to be 100% stress-free as that won’t prepare the infant’s system for the realities of daily life. After all for a helpless infant daily occurrences can feel like a full on crisis – hunger, coldness, loneliness, too much excitement, a soggy bottom but once they are relieved from these it builds internal systems that can cope with short term stress.

Pre-conception preparation ideas:

Do a ‘stress stock-take’ – what are the biggest daily stresses – how can they be reduced or thought about in a different way? E.g. travel – can you use some calming essential oils to feel more relaxed and change what you listen to or your journey?

Mini stress-free moments – teach yourself to take a minute to reeeelax – something as simple as opening your arms out, putting weight into your feet, and breathing slowly in through your nose – hold – slowly out through your mouth. Repeat-repeat-repeat.

Go outside – take a break, go for a small walk. Challenge yourself to be off your phone for it and to notice 3 things to be grateful for on your walk – it was sunny, I saw a funny little dog, I smiled at someone.

Yoga – take 10 minutes in the morning and/or evening to stretch and connect to your body as a resource for calmness. Youtube is full of yoga videos – I use Yoga with Adriene 

Eat well – don’t go crazy getting in tons of organic food and start juicing everything (unless you love this) Do be more aware of keeping a balance to your food. Cut back on, or cut out alcohol.

Have fun – laugh, spend time with loved ones, go for a massage. Whatever makes you happy?

DNA has a history

The DNA that will shape an infant’s mental health is part of the story. What happens to this combined DNA will make all of the difference. Epigenetics is revealing to us how important lived experiences are both pre-conception, during pregnancy and in the first 1001 days of rapid brain growth. Genes can be passed on, the environment they exist in can cause them to lie dormant or to be switched on (Rachel Yehuda is excellent on this)

I so wish I had known this before and during my pregnancy 26 years ago. I took pregnancy as a green light (once I was over being sick) to eat every and anything I fancied in stupid quantities! In my adult son I see the end result of this and other things I could and would have addressed had I known.

Go joyously down the path to pregnancy

Pay attention to, respect and address your stress-levels as they will create the foundation of your infant’s health.

For those of us who didn’t know this there is still much that can be done. We have a huge body of knowledge now about how to reduce infant, child and adult anxiety which fits well with the brain’s amazing capacity to rewire.

Give your precious infant the best canvas to paint their beautiful picture on that you can. Know that life isn’t perfect and there is always hope.