Childbirth: Both parents experience Surges in Sexuality

Partners of new mothers often experience shifts in sexuality, and these shifts are often unrelated to biological or medical factors pertaining to childbirth.

The findings, which are published in a recent issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, expand current understanding of postpartum sexuality, and may help health professionals as they counsel new parents.

Research on postpartum sexuality has typically focused on female reproductive biology in birth mothers—for example, how hormonal changes that accompany pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding affect sexual desire, or how birth-related interventions affect sexual activity.

Few studies have looked at sexuality in the partners of postpartum women, even though it may be important for postpartum women's perceptions of their own sexuality.

Sari van Anders

Sari van Anders, PhD, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and her colleagues designed a study to examine postpartum sexuality as a social and relational process, focusing on co-parents.

A total of 114 partners (95 men, 18 women, 1 unspecified) of postpartum women completed an online questionnaire about their sexuality during the three months following their youngest child's birth.

Attention was paid to physical, social, psychological, and relational experiences.

The researchers found that partners experience shifts in sexuality, just as birth mothers do. The changes that they experienced were linked to relational and social processes, not just biological or medical factors.

In fact, low desire in partners was largely influenced by factors related to caring for a new baby—such as fatigue and stress—rather than by factors related to the birth and/or birth mother, as more typically presumed.

"Our findings help to clarify how co-parents experience sexuality in myriad ways that are contextualized within partner and parenting relationships," said Dr. van Anders.

"What is of note is that we have come to recognize that sexual health of one partner may be related to the sexual health of the other, no matter the cause of the change in sexuality. It is important to publish studies in all aspects of sexual health," explained Irwin Goldstein, editor-in-chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

More information: "Exploring co-parent experiences of sexuality in the first 3 months after birth." Sari M. van Anders, Lauren E. Hipp, and Lisa Kane Low. The Journal of Sexual Medicine; Published Online: August 1, 2013 DOI: 10.1111/jsm.12194

Chronic Stress in Pregnancy prevents brain benefits of motherhood

A new study in animals shows that chronic stress during pregnancy prevents brain benefits of motherhood, a finding that researchers suggest could increase understanding of postpartum depression.

Rat mothers showed an increase in brain cell connections in regions associated with learning, memory and mood.

In contrast, the brains of mother rats that were stressed twice a day throughout pregnancy did not show this increase.

The researchers were specifically interested in dendritic spines – hair-like growths on brain cells that are used to exchange information with other neurons.

Previous animal studies conducted by lead author Benedetta Leuner of Ohio State University showed that an increase of dendritic spines in new mothers’ brains was associated with improved cognitive function on a task that requires behavioral flexibility – in essence, enabling more effective multitasking.

The dendritic spines increased by about 20 percent in these brain regions in new mothers, according to her findings.

The stress in this new study negated those brain benefits of motherhood, causing the stressed rats’ brains to match brain characteristics of animals that had no reproductive or maternal experience.

The stressed rats also had less physical interaction with their babies than did unstressed rats, a behaviour observed in human mothers who experience postpartum depression.

“Animal mothers in our research that are unstressed show an increase in the number of connections between neurons. Stressed mothers don’t,” said Leuner, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Ohio State.

“We think that makes the stressed mothers more vulnerable. They don’t have the capacity for brain plasticity that the unstressed mothers do, and somehow that’s contributing to their susceptibility to depression.”


Previous research has suggested that there are a number of risk factors for postpartum depression, including hormone fluctuations, prior history of mental illness and environmental factors such as smoking or low socioeconomic status.

One of the strongest predictors, however, is chronic stress during pregnancy, so Leuner sought to create an animal model that could help explain brain changes linked to postpartum depression.

“It’s devastating not only for the mother, because it affects her well-being, but previous research also has shown that children of depressed mothers have impaired cognitive and social development, may have impaired physical development, and are more likely as adults to have depression or anxiety,” she said.

“A better understanding of postpartum depression is important to help the mother but also to prevent some of the damaging effects that this disorder can have on the child.”

The researchers exposed pregnant rats to stress twice a day by limiting their mobility on some days and on other days placing them in water. For three weeks after the rats gave birth, Leuner and colleagues monitored the rats.

The animals showed classic signs of the effects of stress, including lower than normal weight gain and enlarged adrenal glands, a sign of high stress-hormone production. The mothers stressed during pregnancy also gave birth to smaller pups.

“And they were not very good mothers,” Leuner said. After separation from pups for 30 minutes, unstressed mothers would gather up their babies, put them in the nest and nurse them. Stressed mother rats left the pups scattered around, wandered around the cage and fed the babies less frequently.

The stressed mother rats also exhibited more floating than unstressed rats in a water test; animals that float rather than swim are showing depressive-like symptoms.

“These findings in rats mimic some of the symptoms that are seen in women with postpartum depression,” Leuner said.

An examination of the animals’ brains showed that the rats exposed to chronic stress did not grow the additional dendritic spines in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex that the unstressed mother rats did.

The stressed rats’ brains more closely resembled the brains of control rats that had never been mothers.

“We don’t yet know what the exact trigger is for the increase in spines in motherhood, but we know that the increase goes away with stress,” Leuner said.

She is continuing the work by investigating whether the beneficial effects of motherhood on cognitive functions are also blocked in mothers who are exposed to pregnancy stress as well as whether hormonal factors play a role.

The Autumn of your Life may mean Longevity

Autumn Colours

People born in autumn are more likely to live for 100 years compared to those born in summer, according to a report in the Journal of Aging Research.

Researchers from the University of Chicago have found that people, who are born in autumn, from September to November, are likely to live for 100 years compared to those who are born in March.

The discovery was made while analysing data from the Rootsweb ancestry website.

Researchers conducted a study on more than 1,500 centenarians born in the United States between 1880 and 1895. The data obtained from the study was compared with 10,855 shorter-lived siblings and 1,083 spouses.

"Centenarians (cases) were compared to their "normal" shorter-lived siblings (controls) or spouses using a within-family analysis.

This approach allows investigators to study the within-family differences, not being confounded by the between-family variation.

Long-lived persons born in 1880-1895 were used as cases," said Leonid A Gavrilov, researcher at the University of Chicago, in a statement.

The study found that people who are born in September, October and November have a longer life span compared to their siblings born in March, April, May, June, July and August.

"These results demonstrate that persons born in September-November have significantly higher chances of exceptional longevity than persons born in March.

This survival advantage of persons born in the fall months is consistent across different lifespan cut-offs suggesting long-lasting influence of season of birth on longevity," said Natalia S Gavrilova, researcher at the University of Chicago, in a statement.

Researchers are not sure as how month of the birth affects mortality and health in later life but they have suggested some theories.

One is that the nutritional status of mother during pregnancy might have a long lasting effect on the child in later life, which in turn can increase the mortality risk.

Another theory is that children born between March and August are likely to be affected by several infections and disease, which in turn increase their mortality rate.

According to the researchers, the human enterovirus and it's cousin, poliovirus have epidemic peaks, only in the months of July and August.

The effect of environmental temperature during the time of birth may be another possible explanation for low proportion of centenarians among individuals born during the summer and spring months.

For example, Britons, who had experienced higher summer temperatures during their first year of life, had severe diarrhea and dehydration in infancy and they had higher blood pressure at older ages, according to the Journal of Aging Research.

Link Between Childbirth and Bipolar Affective Disorder

New research show that risks of developing bipolar affective disorder is increased if a woman experiences a psychiatric episode within the first 30 days after childbirth.

"Childbirth has an important influence on the onset and course of bipolar affective disorder, and studies have shown that episodes of post-partum psychosis are often best considered as presentations of bipolar affective disorder occurring at a time of dramatic psychological and physiological change," the researchers said in the report which was published in Archives of General Psychiatry.

The researchers led by Trine Munk-Olsen, Ph.D., of the National Centre for Register-Based Research, Arhus University in Denmark, collected data on 120,378 women from 1950 to 1991who had a history of a first-time psychiatric contact with any type of psychiatric disorder excluding bipolar affective disorder.

A total of 2,870 of these women had their initial psychiatric contact within the first year after delivery of their first child. During follow-up, 3,062 of the 120,378 women were diagnosed of bipolar affective disorder, of which 132 had their initial psychiatric contact 0 to 12 months post-partum.

Researchers found a significantly higher conversion rate to bipolar affective disorder in women having their initial contact within the first post-partum month. In addition, evidence that the severity of the initial post-partum psychiatric episode may be important, as inpatient admissions were associated with a higher conversion rate than were outpatient contacts, were found.
After fifteen years from initial psychiatric contact, 13.87 percent of women with onset in the immediate post-partum period (0 to 30 days) had converted to bipolar disorder, the study said.

"The present study confirms the well-established link between childbirth and bipolar affective disorder and specifically adds to this field of research by demonstrating that initial psychiatric contact within the first 30 days post-partum significantly predicted conversion to bipolar affective disorder during the follow-up period," the authors conclude.