Fetus gender on the mood and prenatal attachment of natural pregnant women and those who conceived by assisted reproductive technology
Reza Omani Samani (IR), Leila Alizadeh (IR), Zahra Ezabadi (IR)
[Omani Samani] Department of Epidemiology and Reproductive Health, Reproductive Epidemiology Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran, [Alizadeh] Department of Epidemiology and Reproductive Health, Reproductive Epidemiology Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran, [Ezabadi] Department of Epidemiology and Reproductive Health, Reproductive Epidemiology Research Center, Royan Institute for Reproductive Biomedicine, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
Background: Gender of offspring is important in many developing countries, but it may be different in infertile patients who have been waiting for a long time and took so many treatments and also spent so much money for conception. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of desired sex of fetus on feto-maternal attachment and mood status of pregnant women conceived by assisted reproductive techniques. Methods: 147 infertile women who had been pregnant by ART in royan institute were recruited as the case group. Control group consist of 334 normal pregnant women who were gathered by multi stage sampling method. Sampling were done from clinics, hospitals and prenatal health care centers through 20 municipally areas of Tehran. All the cases were at their 27-34 gestational week. Prenatal attachment inventory (PNA) containing 21 questions with a 4 likert scale from almost always to almost never was used along with Hospital anxiety depression scale (HADS) which contains two separate parts: one for measuring the anxiety and another for depression each one has 7 questions with a likert scale. Results: Mean age of our cases was 30±0.3 which was significantly higher than mean age of control group 27±0.2 (p<0.001). In the ART group, significantly higher people has no concern about their fetus’s gender (p=0.006). There were significantly higher demand for female infant in case group comparing to control group (p<0.001). There was no relation between favorableness of the fetus’s gender and anxiety or depression both in case control groups (P>0.05) and also we could not find any relation between favorableness of the fetus and prenatal attachment of the mother (P>0.05). Conclusion: gender of the fetus had no relation with mood and prenatal attachment in both natural and ART conceived pregnant women.