BACKGROUND Maternal counting of fetal movement is a popular and valuable screening tool of fetal wellbeing, however it is still not known what percentage of healthy pregnant women who gave birth to healthy term newborns had experienced decreased fetal movements during gestation and what maternal and fetal factors are associated with this maternal perception of decreased fetal movements. The aim...

Maternal nutrition plays a crucial role in influencing fertility, fetal development, birth outcomes, and breast milk composition. During the critical window of time from conception through the initiation of complementary feeding, the nutrition of the mother is the nutrition of the offspring-and a mother's dietary choices can affect both the early health status and lifelong disease risk of the o...

Maternal behavior is regulated by several neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and hormones. This mini-review focuses on the role of cholecystokinin (CCK), a neuropeptide and gut hormone best known as a satiety signal, in mediating maternal behavior. In addition to the role of CCK in the infant in mother-infant interactions, maternal CCK appears to also be important. We discuss maternal behavior r...

In nonhuman primates and humans, similar to other mammals, hormones are not strictly necessary for the expression of maternal behavior, but nevertheless influence variation in maternal responsiveness and parental behavior both within and between individuals. A growing number of correlational and experimental studies have indicated that high circulating estrogen concentrations during pregnancy i...

Maternal anxiety during pregnancy has been consistently shown to negatively affect offspring neurodevelopmental outcomes. However, little is known about the impact of positive maternal traits/states during pregnancy on the offspring. The present study was aimed at investigating the effects of the mother's mindfulness and anxiety during pregnancy on the infant's neurocognitive functioning at 9 m...

Maternal behavior is a primary social characteristic of mammals. By studying maternal behavior in rats, broader inferences can be made about the neural circuits that influence maternal behavior in other mammals, including humans. Maternal behavior of rats includes nest building, pup grooming, nursing, and pup retrieval. The projections from the medial preoptic area of the hypothalamus (MPOA) to...

This study's objective was to examine the association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and childhood aggressive behavior in African-American and Puerto Rican children, as well as the relationship between maternal unconventional behavior, low maternal affection, and offspring aggression. Participants consisted of African-American and Puerto Rican children (N = 203; mean age = 8.6, SD = ...

reproductive behavior of 1525 pregnant woman were studied in the time of termination of pregnancy in relation to maternal age, education, prenatal care and the number of previous pregnancies. the results show that the frequency of maternal attendance at the centers of prenatal care is significantly related to maternal education. and the total pregnancies per woman are inversely correlated with ...