Strollerderby
How You Hold Your Baby Tells Whether You’re Depressed
There may be a new clue in recognizing post-partum depression, and it’s all in how you hold your baby. Like with telephones, most parents develop a preference in which hand they use predominantly to hold their babies. I’m the opposite of most people, as I’m right-handed but use right hand-right ear to talk on the phone, and all four of my babies mostly were held to the right. Most people, whether right- or left-handed, use left hand-left ear and face their babies left.
Right?
It turns out there may be a correlation between left- and right-facing baby holds and extreme stress levels (which we all know lead straight to the Depths of Depression!): a small study of moms with babies who were on average 7 months old, it was the right-facing moms who evidenced the most signs of extreme stress. Most moms hold their babies toward the left regardless of their dominant hand, and the overwhelming majority of moms who had no signs of stress or depression all held toward the left.
So, to recap: left = not depressed; right = please pass the Prozac.
I’ll point out again that I held all my babies to the right. If you’re a new mom or an old mom and you’re stressed like that, don’t tough it out; get help. There’s no shame in it. I wish I had.
I’ll point out too that it’s a small study and there’s no definitive correlation here, so there may be nothing in this theory. Shall we have a Strollerderby Science Day with an impromptu poll here in the comments?
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7 Comments
RachelZ commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI am ambidexterous, but I write with my left and and my left leg is the one I lead with when going down (but not up) a flight of stairs. Since Jillian’s room and changing table is upstairs, I tend to hold her in my right arm. I also sling the diaper bag over my right arm, which makes for quite a handful.
But depressed? No. Pregnancy hormones actually chilled me out quite a bit and I can feel the crazies trying to come back now – 13 months later. I should be pregnant all the time, I guess.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI’m righthanded and I hold phones with my right hand and hold my baby with my right arm. I always thought it was because my right arm, as the dominant side, is stronger. I have suffered immensely from depression though, so who knows? It just seems a weird thing to connect…baby holding with PPD…
lionandmagicboy commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amMamame: good point. I thought about the breastfeeding thing, too, which if you take that into account seems to even things out quite a bit. But I decided, and this is purely my own theory, that what they meant was that say someone hands you your baby — which direction do you most naturally tend to hold him toward? That’s the direction I went with, which for me was to the right.
mamame commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI dunno. That seems pretty iffy to me. My right boob was way more productive than the left, so baby spent a lot more time cradled on the right … (and I wasn’t overly anxious.)
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amBizarre. I, like you, am right-handed and hold my baby to the right. I didn’t think I felt stressed or anxious but, now that you mention it…
I have to say that there is a plus, as I am becoming ambidexterous.
lionandmagicboy commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amMichele: you’re awfully close, actually; there were 78 women in the study. It would have helped had I put in the link to the article. It’s up now. My bad.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI would like them to define “small study”. Was it all the women at one baby shower?
I feel like they use the term “study” in a headline like it was a sweeping project, and then in the detail you hear that it was “37 out of 71 people who took part in the study…” So if even the researchers are refrring to it as “small”, it was probably done at someone’s kitchen table.
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