Long-term partners have healthier babies
Even if you have met the man of your dreams, don’t rush to make the baby of your dreams just yet. Arriving before the parents familiarise themselves with each other’s bodies could be bad for a baby and the mother too, New Zealand researchers say.
According to the researchers, women who get pregnant within days or weeks of meeting the biological father of the child have three-fold higher risk of developing pre-eclampsia, a disorder that causes hypertension and kidney and liver damage during pregnancy.
The disorder not only puts the mother’s health at risk but also threatens the baby’s life.
While conception in less than six months of sexual relations with the biological father can make a woman vulnerable to pre-eclampsia, the risk is much higher if the baby is conceived on the first sexual encounter itself.The University of Auckland researchers tracked 2,507 women who were pregnant for the first time and asked them about how long they had known the baby’s daddy. Tracking the women for the full term of their pregnancy, they found that pre-eclampsia was more common in women who got pregnant within the initial few weeks of being in a relationship with the baby’s father.
Such women were also more likely to have underweight babies compared with those who were in long-term relationships.
The findings were consistent after adjusting for the subjects’ general health, weight, and tobacco and alcohol consumption, which could affect the baby’s health.
Lead author Dr Larry Chamley said the findings suggest a woman’s body takes time to adjust to her partner’s sperms. “In normal pregnancies, prolonged exposure of the female immune system to paternal antigens following intercourse leads to tolerance of the maternal immune system to paternal antigens. Although the issue of whether prolonged semen exposure does protect against developing pre-eclampsia is not yet resolved this paper seems to tip the weight of evidence back in favour of suggesting that prolonged semen exposure is protective,” he said.
Published in the Journal of Reproductive Immunology, the findings suggest when it comes to love and family, slow and steady is the way to go.
