Career women in high-stress jobs who are pregnant have a significantly higher risk of having premature labor, according to a Weber State College nursing professor.
Joanne Duke said data revealed by the March of Dimes indicate working women in high-stress, career-related environments can have as much as a 50 percent higher chance of premature labor than do their non-working counterparts."What maintains the pregnancy are a woman's hormones, and stress causes poor hormonal imbalance," said Duke, an assistant professor in Weber State's nursing program.
Physicians have long recognized that heavy physical labor can induce premature labor and delivery. But Duke said only recently has stress-related employment been linked to premature babies.
"My advice to working women who are pregnant is to quit, or take a break, especially in the last trimester," she said.
What about women whose economic realities don't allow them to quit work during pregnancies?
Get as much rest as possible, Duke recommends.
"Go straight home (after work) and go to bed," she said. "That takes a great deal of family understanding and support, especially in families where the wife fills both roles as provider and homemaker."
In the United States some women work up until the moment they go into labor. Companies don't prohibit it.
By comparison, France, in an effort to reduce early deliveries, provides a workers compensation for pregnant women.
"Economically it makes more sense to pay for a woman's wage for a few months as opposed to paying for hospital intensive care (for the premature baby)," she said. Pediatric ICU costs can amount to more than $1,000-a-day for several months.
Duke cautioned that the tendency for early deliveries runs in families. Thus, women with mothers or grandmothers who had early labor should take extra precautions; they should not stand too long, or sit extensively in one place. Both positions, unaltered, can reduce blood flow to the baby, she said.
The nurse also warned that smoking is particularly harmful to the fetus, cutting the baby's oxygen supply and constricting blood vessels.
"The fetus exists on bare minimums of oxygen as it is, and in a smoking mom the oxygen content of the fetus really drops," she said.
That decrease in oxygen can reduce blood flow to the placenta, which dies and detaches from the uterus wall. The resulting hemorrhaging "usually leads to premature labor and creates emergency C-section situations."
Take care of yourself and your fetus before problems develop is Duke's advise to expectant mothers. And, if warning signs appear, take extra cautions.
"Many kind of pooh, pooh Brackston Hicks (false labor pains), but it's only called false labor if you go full term. If you're at risk and start having false labor it's time to stay home," Duke said.