Long term relationships can make for healthier babies, research from the University of Auckland suggests.
A long term relationship could allow a mother-to-be to develop better immunity against her partner’s proteins, in turn reducing the risk pre-eclampsia or the baby being born underweight.
An excerpt: (Read in full here)
“The researchers, led by Associate Professor Lesley McCowan, asked 2507 first-time pregnant women how long they had been with the baby’s father.
“The results of the study, published in the Journal of Reproductive Immunology, were adjusted for the lifestyle and background of the women including their weight, whether they smoked and their general health.
“When the pregnancies came to term, pre-eclampsia was found to be less common in women who had long-term sexual relations only with the biological father, than in those who had been with their partner for a short time.”