Morning Sickness Has Been Linked to Children’s Intelligence

Posted on Mar 27, 2012 | Morning Sickness News Category | | Print This Article

For most of us, tossing our cookies every morning isn’t exactly an exciting experience. Maybe it should be. Believe it or not, a recent Canadian study has linked morning sickness during pregnancy with children’s intelligence. According to the study, all that nausea and vomiting during pregnancy might be a sign you have a little Einstein on the way.

It’s no secret that morning sickness is a normal part of a healthy pregnancy. For years, research has shown that expectant mothers with morning sickness are more likely to have healthy babies. This is one of the first studies, however, to consider the effects of morning sickness on baby’s intelligence later in life.

The study considered over 120 children. While a number of factors were considered, the main focus had to do with whether the child’s mother had morning sickness and whether she took medication. Expectant mothers involved in the study were divided into three categories:

• Moms who did not experience morning sickness during pregnancy
• Moms who experienced morning sickness during pregnancy but did not use medical treatment to deal with it
• Moms who were treated for morning sickness with diclectin

The children of each pregnancy were tested for cognitive ability twice: once when they were three years old and once when they were seven years old. Children whose mothers had experienced morning sickness scored higher across the board. In particular, they scored higher in regards to:

• Verbal/language fluency
• Performance based IQ
• Numerical memory
• Phonological processing

The study further suggests that the worse your morning sickness is, the more intelligent your baby is likely to be. It is believed that this is because the same hormones released by the placenta which cause morning sickness also aid in baby’s neurological development.

The study showed no significant difference in intelligence levels of children whose mothers were treated for morning sickness with diclectin and those who weren’t. Diclectin is believed to be a safe way to treat morning sickness. At the very least, it appears that using the drug to combat morning sickness now  won’t affect baby’s chances of eventually winning the Nobel Prize for Physics.

What do you think? Does knowing your baby might be smarter make suffering with morning sickness more “worth it?”

 

 

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