Last year, asmy wife and I prepared for the arrival of our second child, I began to worry. My wife is a mid-level manager at an advertising agency with offices around the world. She heads a team, and she’s ferociously dedicated to her work—which translated, late in her pregnancy, to a couple of 80-hour weeks and chronic sleep deprivation. When she came home from work at 2 a.m. for the second time in as many weeks, I started to fear that her grueling schedule might affect her health, and that of our unborn son.
As a science journalist, I’ve become familiar with a burgeoning area of research called the fetal origins of disease. It examines how what happens to your mother during pregnancy can affect your vulnerability to any number of lifelong disorders, including asthma, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and schizophrenia and other psychiatric problems. We’ve internalized some of this science already—we know, for example, that excessive drinking while pregnant isn’t good. Less well known are the consequences of things like infection and severe stress. They, too, may leave a legacy.
