The relationship between Mother Non-Harmful Anxiety and Neonatal Anthropometric Indices during Pregnancy

Anxiety and depression are the two most common disorders which all the women experience during their life. Pregnancy and childbirth are stressing events in women’s life which are associated with some degree of anxiety. Concerning the infant’s abnormalities, birth pain, and feeling the maternal responsibilities are prenatal sources of anxiety. This research has been done in order to study the relationship between the mothers non-harmful anxiety with neonatal anthropometric indices during pregnancy periods. Samples of this longitudinal research have been chosen from the pregnant women referred to Public Hospitals, and health and social security center of Tehran from September of 2010 up to November of the same year.150 pregnant women with gestational age of less than 3 months were chosen based on the target. Because of the longitudinal study, cases that completely filled the Cattell Anxiety Inventory Form in three stages were reduced to 41 persons. Cattell Anxiety Questionnaire was completed in three quarters of pregnancy period by subjects and association of project colleagues. All the postnatal anthropometric indices of the infants (weight, height, head perimeter, and apgar score) were recorded based on the neonatal characteristic sheets. Data were analyzed by SPSS software, and (18th version) inferential and descriptive statistics. The Pearson correlation and regression methods were used to study the relationship among research variations. p=0.05 was considered statistically significant. Anxiety score didn’t show any significant relation between the two last quarters and apgar score (p=0.05) but a positive correlation between the first quarter and apgar score (p=0.05). The findings of this research can be a positive approval of effect of mother non-harmful anxiety on neonatal anthropometric indices. In other words, increasing of the anxiety in an acceptable level can be an ideal item for a fetus and improve the situation of neonatal anthropometric indices.