Pregnancy can be stressful sometimes, but mother should try to suck it up whenever possible. Because they could be hurting the neurological development of her unborn child. Such impairment increases the risk of acquiring schizophrenia later in life.

The link between maternal stress and fetal development is not new however. There have been many research and studies before. Studies have suggested that a mother’s stress during pregnancy may increase the risk of congenital brain malformations in her baby. And it has been well established that severe maternal stress is associated with low birth weight and premature birth.

Stress before pregnancy or in late pregnancy had no such effect; neither did stress associated with a family member’s illness. How the mother’s emotional stress impacts her fetus’s growth is still mostly a mystery. It’s possible that increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol interfere directly with fetal development.

It may also be that the mother’s stress response triggers a cascade of other chemical changes — in her immune system, in blood levels of sex hormones, or perhaps in cell-signaling proteins called cytokines — that may indirectly affect early fetal development.