Anxiety, pregnancy, labor, and the neonate

In order to study the relationship between maternal anxiety during pregnancy and birth weight, a prospective study involving 61 pregnant women was undertaken. At the same time, provision was made for the testing of several other hypotheses, among them that anxiety during pregnancy would be negatively correlated with age, gravidity, and parity and that those mothers who had an abnormal labor had been more anxious during their pregnancy than those whose labors were normal. In all cases anxiety was measured objectively by means of two anxiety scales of the “true or false” type. Although the results did not support the postulated relationship between anxiety and birth weight, several of the other hypotheses postulated proved to be statistically significant.