“But a woman’s mental health is an integral part of her fetus’ environment,” explains Catherine Monk, a medical psychologist at Columbia University. “And a burgeoning body of evidence shows that a pregnant woman’s psychological health can influence that of her child’s.”
— Knowable Magazine
If you haven’t read that article yet, I highly recommend it — it’s fascinating, validating, and might just explain a few things you’ve always wondered about yourself (as it did for me).
For years, I’ve asked myself why I am the way I am. Why I overthink. Why intrusive thoughts feel like an unwanted playlist on loop. Why I feel mentally exhausted just thinking about folding laundry. The short answer? Part genetics. Part brain chemistry. Part… womb experience?
My mom was born in Guatemala and migrated to Boston, Massachusetts in 1985, then moved to Philadelphia where she’s lived ever since. My dad is Puerto Rican, born and raised right here in Philly. When my mom got pregnant with me — her first child — it was during a really stressful period in her life.
While I want to respect her privacy and not get into the specifics, I think it’s important to say that emotional stress during pregnancy isn’t just a “feeling” — it can have a physiological effect on the developing fetus. And when I look at my own struggles with anxiety, ADHD, and OCD, I can’t help but wonder how much of that began before I was even born.
Turns out, there’s a real connection between a mother’s emotional state during pregnancy and how a child’s brain develops. Human studies show that maternal stress, anxiety, and trauma can influence the fetal nervous system. And it’s not just emotional — we’re talking biochemical changes that can shape how the brain responds to stress, attention, and even reward later in life. (Yes, science is wild.)
This hit home when I was recently diagnosed with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). It was both a relief and a lightbulb moment. Finally, a reason why some “simple” tasks feel like climbing mental Mount Everests.
Here’s the thing: people with ADHD often struggle with dopamine dysregulation. Dopamine is the brain’s “reward” chemical — it’s what makes normal things like checking a task off a list feel satisfying. But for me, wiping down the kitchen counters doesn’t exactly light up my brain. Instead, I get stuck in a weird in-between state of “I should do this” and “but my brain says… meh.”
Add in executive dysfunction — aka, my brain’s trouble with planning, organizing, and time management — and you’ve got a recipe for overwhelm. I often have no idea how long something will take, I start tasks and forget what I was doing mid-way, and when stress kicks in, so does emotional chaos.
When it comes to the OCD — as small as it might sound on the surface — it can be incredibly overwhelming. Intrusive thoughts about awful, worst-case-scenario situations pop into my head constantly. And the more I try to ignore them, the louder they seem to get. The only thing that sometimes helps is thinking them through or talking them out. But let’s be real… I can’t have a running commentary with someone 24/7 about the weird stuff my brain decides to obsess over.
I’ll get so anxious about things that haven’t even happened (and probably never will), but my body reacts like they already have. It’s exhausting. I’m still figuring out how to pull myself out of those thought spirals — how to ground myself, distract my mind, and remind myself that a thought isn’t a fact. It’s a work in progress.
So much of who we are starts long before we take our first breath — in biology, in experience, in stress we didn’t even know we were swimming in. Learning about this connection between pregnancy and mental health hasn’t just helped me understand my brain better, it’s helped me forgive it. I’m still working through the noise, the spirals, and the mental rewiring — but I’m doing it with compassion now. Because maybe the most powerful inheritance isn’t just what’s passed down, but how we choose to face it.