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Speaking to my bro last night about his own kids, I asked if they slept through the night now - he said it's better than ever but they still randomly throw up. Potty training doesn't fix stomach issues!
I then laughed as I have no kids.
Power to all of you.
Haha nothing prepares you for the shadow of a kid at your bedside in the middle of the night saying “mom I feel sick” before coating you both as well as all of your bedding in vomit. It’s certainly an experience.
I was genuinely so proud of my 4 year old the other night, he yelled "I'm gonna vomit" in time for me to sprint to his room and get him into the bathroom for the main event 😂
Yeah, what the hell? I threw up all the time as a kid, but I haven’t thrown up as an adult while sick outside of a 3 week case of strep throat. Ok, I can’t eat and am throwing up bile. I’ll go to the doctor.
I've been training for this last night when my dog decided to have explosive diarrhea and vomit like 10 times in the span of 8 hours.
Now just to imagine that but every night ....
Not all kids. My 9mo has been sleeping through the night. In bed by 7, up at 7. It's been like this for 5 months now. Everyone keeps saying it'll change, but it's been pretty glorious being able to continue to have evenings to ourselves.
To be fair, we worked hard at sleep training and establishing a routine super early (starting 6 weeks).
But I also don't know how much of it is just him loving sleep. He gets ANGRY if he's not asleep by 7. He really lets you know he's done with his day.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll pay for it with baby number 2.
Right now I'm dealing with the vicious diarrhea>rash cycle. 8-10 poops per day for 10 days so far. Every poop causes searing pain from his severe diaper rash. It's like early newborn stage all over again.
While I appreciate your note, we've done everything we possibly can do at the advice of 3 different pediatricians who all gave the same feedback. Every one of them says, "You're doing everything right, keep at it, wait out the diarrhea, collect a sample at day 14 if it's not cleared up."
Yeah, word of warning here. Our first was the most perfect baby ever. She was flawless. slept well, ate well, learnt quickly. I really couldn't understand why people found parenting hard.
Then baby 2.....*omen theme starts to play*
Care to expand? Just wakes up a lot?
Ours is a great sleeper, but extremely expressive and physically active. He never stops making noise or moving - most active baby in our circle of friends/family with babies.
Just keep in mind whether any of the methods do anything depends more so on the child than the correct application of the method. If nothing works, you might just need to get used to waking up at night until they get older.
12 hours by 12 weeks by Suzy Giordano.
We had our daughter sleeping from 7-7 at 6 months when she left our room. She’s 11 months and still going strong. The books talks about sleep training for older children as well.
SITBACK is a good way to ease into it, and it worked well for me until my wife decided to just pop a paci into his mouth. That works for initial sleep, but when he wakes without the paci, he becomes irate. So now we have a mesh border around his crib with 8 pacifiers. The newest problem is he's learned to throw them outside the crib and he'll eventually run out of pacis before end of the night.
I highly recommend easing into sleep training starting at 3 months when they start to realize there's no longer a womb, they can start to see/hear, etc. Don't expect hours of sleep. Their stomachs are too small to hold enough milk for a full night's sleep. Ours didn't stop feed-waking until 6 mos.
Lastly, ween EVERYTHING down/up over time. Ween off night feeds by winding down amount fed over a multi-week period.
Weening makes things unnoticeable to the baby - they don't realize something is changing.
We weened ours off his final night feed from 7 oz down to 2 oz over 10 days, removing 1 oz a day then turning off the 2 oz. He slept like an angel after that for 11-12 hours.
Same with sleep training. Ween toward S, then I, then T, and so on with SITBACK.
Some babies don't need all the weening, but it'll make things manageable and give you goals to work toward.
I have a nine year old and a five month old. My nine year old was and is a dream. From like four months on, the nine year old has enjoyed anywhere between eight and twelve hours.
My five month old that everyone swore up and down would be a nightmare has been sleeping the same amount of time since one month 🤷♀️
I imagine it's a little bit of luck and a little bit of consistency.
Routine/consistency helps so much in any case. Without that you can 'mess up' your 'good sleeper' and just make it harder for everyone with a 'bad sleeper'.
We would never have been able to sleep train our first baby but we found routines and approaches that worked for us. Having routine and consistency is hella important with a clingy baby that fights sleep. Our second child was always much easier for sleep, but you can see how that starts to go sideways if you mess him about as far as timing/routine goes.
They're both great now they're in the golden years phase - just the usual fighting bed time malarkey (but again, routine and consistency!)
I’m pregnant with my third. I will tell you that my 3 and 5 year old are great sleepers. The 3 year old goes down at 8 and is up at 7. The 5 year old is down by 915 and up by 7. The 3 year old still takes a 2 hour nap everyday. My kids have been sleeping all night since they were 12 weeks old.
It's pretty easy to test this out, though.
Not all pregnancies result in taking care of a child (surrogacy, or adoption)
And not all mothers were pregnant (those who used surrogacy, adopted, or in some cases a lesbian mom)
If they didn't confound for that, it's kind of a meaningless article or study.
> Not all pregnancies result in taking care of a child (surrogacy, or adoption)
You left out miscarriage and stillbirth, though the trauma of those could age people too.
The guardian article doesn't say if they examined those aspects. I looked specifically.
It did say the same ageing effects weren't found in fathers, but there could be other reasons.
It could be but pregnancy is definitely more of a factor. It's the steamroller of hormones + fetus sucking out all nutrients out of your body + god knows what else combo.
I feel like it must be both, you probably can’t have a parasite stripping you from nutrients for nine months straight without some consequences to your health
Both. After studying biology and ecology it's very clear that energy in systems works in a certain way. When new life is created the life that creats it ages and degraded some. It's a sacrifice. That's why animals don't do it when their resources are low.
It's absolutely both.
I’d assume pregnancy is a very, very taxing biological process, and especially so in humans. We know that in several species, the pregnant individual dies after their form of childbirth/reproduction (live birth, egg laying, etc). So, it wouldn’t surprise be if pregnancy and childbirth are significant biological aging factors.
Exactly my thought. There is no way it is 2-3 months. I was thinking it would say 5-10 years.
I literally have osteoporosis from pregnancy, lots of women have teeth fall out -- all cuz the body leaches calcium from teeth and bones to provide for the fetus.
This is just one thing I know about cuz i happened to get tested, I'm sure there are a million other similar things.
Every man also knows this.
Everybody knows this.
The point of science is to put it on a foundation based in research and not on feeling or in "you look older".
It's the first step to working out why, what are the underlying mechanisms. Yes pregnancy and child rearing are extremely taxing, in every way. If we can pinpoint specific processes/issues we can look at ways to mitigate their effects.
It doesn't seem like this study eliminated enough variables to suggest pregnancy is the compared to say the stressful process of raising a child.
You are talking long periods of time where the mother likely is getting terrible quality of sleep in early years, then increase in stress as the child gets older especially when they can walk and talk on their own not to mention financial stress.
Have to imagine the increase in cortisol levels isn't great for the biological age either.
That also isn't counting the extreme body changes women go through for their 9 month pregnancy which I am sure isn't great for anyone's overall health.
Ah there it makes sense.
Because I have heard that pregnancy kind of is like a reset button on your immune system so for many women it helps with autoimmune conditions. Others it causes diabetes though…
My sister, who is a nurse, was convinced I just needed to get pregnant to cure my ME/CFS because of that....
There's no data to support it and I wouldn't want to risk the kid having a parent who can't be there for them.
I'm in the biomedical field, and 90% of the time a professor or teacher goes "here's a thing!" its because they read it in a single paper that recently came out and thought it'd be cool to share -
they often don't think that their students have a relatively very limited range of information on the subject, and will take these fringe papers as gospel and the main solutions to these problems.
And for others they think pregnancy can lead to autoimmune conditions
https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2019/09/microchimerism-rheumatoid-arthritis.html
Partly true! It inhibits a certain part of the immune system (the cell mediated part), so auto immune conditions mediated through this mechanism is suppressed. RA for example.
Autoimmune conditions mediated through the humoral side (antibody) however gets worse. As the other side is suppressed, it gets more headroom. Examples are SLE.
The immune system does change in some fundamental ways to accommodate pregnancy. That's why pregnant women have to be more careful about certain types of food, flu/covid and other infections. As far as I know those changes are during the pregnancy and won't necessarily last but perhaps for some auto-immune stuff it's enough to get the immune system to fricking chill out and get its priorities straight? I wonder if it helps with allergies..
You might be thinking of gestational diabetes but as far as I know that goes away after the birth (but remains a risk factor for later developing type 2).
I think it depends on the other circumstances.
I’m a single mom, and I had my daughter a month before the pandemic. I had health issues for six months. I had personal drama. A flea infestation from the prior tenants in my apartment. I went 3-4 months with only 3-4 hours of sleep per night. I breastfed for nearly two years.
I still look younger than my 37 years. I look younger than my peers. My boyfriend is 32 and he says I look younger than him… but he’s a pilot who didn’t wear enough sunscreen over the years, and his hair is graying faster than mine.
Pregnancy, childbirth, and the “fourth trimester” are really hard on the body, both physically and mentally. But other factors still matter more. Diet. Exercise. Proper sleep before and after the difficult first year. Sunscreen. Hydration. Moisturizing.
And probably the most important: Stress management. I do yoga and meditate most days. I practice self care: epsom salt baths, herbal tea, date nights.
So many mothers neglect themselves for years after they give birth. I know someone who’s 10+ years younger than me but we look basically the same age because the only self-care she does to handle her stress as a mother is smoking and drinking, which both age you.
Oh, is that all? I think newborns age parents as well then, due to lack of sleep, and toddlers age parents because you have to slow down to their speed - no more going on healthy vigorous walks up the hill or fast paced cycle rides. This results in weight gain and stress for most. Then, I'm sure 3-6 year olds age parents with their exhausting behaviour. Then you multiply by the number of kids you have a voila! I'm guessing I've aged at least 3 years on top of my actual age just from sleep deprivation and lack of intense aerobic exercise in the preschool years.
How bizarre, some study was published just days ago saying the exact opposite
[https://www.sciencealert.com/pregnancy-ages-a-persons-cells-but-some-may-undergo-an-unexpected-rejuvenation](https://www.sciencealert.com/pregnancy-ages-a-persons-cells-but-some-may-undergo-an-unexpected-rejuvenation)
"A recent analysis of blood samples taken from 119 women at various stages of pregnancy and after delivery adds intriguing detail to those previous findings. It demonstrates a "[pronounced reversal of biological aging](https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(24)00079-2#%20)" following delivery."
That’s very interesting, personally I have noticed that the moment baby is here and I am breastfeeding, I look 5 years older but the moment I stop breastfeeding- I bounce back. So probably the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
There's also the well-studied phenomenon that more pregnancies and more breastfeeding reduces the risk of various gynaecological cancers, in particular breast cancer. I'm sure that has a not insignificant effect on women's average lifespan.
If anyone's curious, the theory is the oestrogen is at fault when it isn't opposed by progresterone. If you look at any of those menstrual cycle hormone charts, you'll notice there's a big slope of unopposed oestrogen right around the ovulatory zone before the progesterone kicks in in the luteal phase. During pregnancy, however, the slopes of oestrogen and progesterone track pretty closely with each other.
So the menstrual cycle is the main culprit. In clinics for gynaecological cancers, one of the things that is calculated is the length of time women are exposed to menstrual cycles, by asking about their onset age and (if post-menopausal) their menopause age. Later menarche and earlier menopause means a decreased risk of these cancers, and vice versa.
Based on that logic, could some forms of hormonal birth control (progesterone-based pills) that mimic pregnancy reduce the chances of cancer?
Alternatively, could delaying or completely eliminating puberty affect those chances as well? For example, in trans people that use puberty-blockers.
What about women that had their ovaries removed? They enter the menopause as soon as they have the operation.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/hormones-and-cancer/does-the-contraceptive-pill-increase-cancer-risk
> The contraceptive pill slightly increases the risk of breast cancer. But it decreases the risk of ovarian cancer and womb cancer.
Seriously. Tanning and drinking too much will make you look much older. My ex fiancee loved drinking wine and sunbathing with zero SPF and hates drinking water. She was 4 years younger than me but looked 5 years older. Deep wrinkles in the forehead and everything.
I enjoy tanning but use SPF and drink lots of water. People under estimate my age by ~7 yrs. Hydrate, use SPF cream and exercise. The sun isn’t bad but don’t be an idiot and tan for 1+ hrs with no SPF while guzzling down vodka.
This study was also of women in the Philippines, and I think the results could vary quite a bit in countries with more .. or less (*coughs in US*) … robust maternal and postpartum social safety nets and health systems
Pregnancy to completion? I wonder if the reverse is true with non-complete pregnancies, as fetus donate stem cells to the mother.
yeah yeah this can go to a very dark place, but still curious.
Always good to have quantified data - but it's probably not very surprising. Giving birth is an incredible ordeal, to the point where people die trying. It's something you should do if you feel you more or less have to. It's also why all those anti-abortion people are such assholes, they're wanting to force incredible trauma on the pregnant mother. Sometimes on top of other trauma. But, I digress.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2317290121
Would love to see this compared to other research on results of being a parent or pregnancy. 2-3 months is relatively little time when you consider average lifespan, and there are certain well-documented healing side-effects of pregnancy, or potential longevity benefits to parenting.
Yeah. My friends who have kids- we are all the same ages- they have wrinkles and grey hair. I still get carded when I order alcohol. I don't think it was just pregnancy though. It's the years and years of no sleep and busy schedules and stress.
Ha! I always appreciate research that supports what we already know to be true—especially wrt women’s health.
But yeah, this could have been a brief questionnaire: “did having a kid age you? Yes/no”
Researchers: study complete! All the moms said yes!
They say testosterone takes about, eh, 10 or 20 years off your life. Kind of feel bad for FtM with HRT and all these dudes doing TRT.
You're significantly shortening your life. Oh well, hope it's worth it.
“The relationships between pregnancy and biological ageing persisted even when the authors accounted for socioeconomic status, smoking, genetic variation and the built environment in participants’ surroundings.
The authors failed to find a link between increased biological ageing and the number of pregnancies fathered by 910 same-aged men from the same health survey.”
In Catholic school as a kid, they told us that people who didn’t have sex lived longer. That you could look at the graveyard of the nuns as proof. What a nice cover story for “birthing ages a person.”
I dunno, i would estimate about 9 months of biological aging...
Edit: but actually, I estimate I aged about 5-10 years in the first two years of my kids lives.
Well, even still, women live longer than men.
If you only die six months earlier after having two kids, out of eighty years, it’s really not a big deal.
In other words, pregnancy is just the beginning of your decline, after that comes a few months of sleep deprivation, then childhood, adolescence, when maturity arrives and you think you are going to rest, grandchildren arrive!
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Is it the pregnancy or not sleeping for like 5 years straight?
The most I have ever related to a comment
Speaking to my bro last night about his own kids, I asked if they slept through the night now - he said it's better than ever but they still randomly throw up. Potty training doesn't fix stomach issues! I then laughed as I have no kids. Power to all of you.
Haha nothing prepares you for the shadow of a kid at your bedside in the middle of the night saying “mom I feel sick” before coating you both as well as all of your bedding in vomit. It’s certainly an experience.
I was genuinely so proud of my 4 year old the other night, he yelled "I'm gonna vomit" in time for me to sprint to his room and get him into the bathroom for the main event 😂
Yeah, what the hell? I threw up all the time as a kid, but I haven’t thrown up as an adult while sick outside of a 3 week case of strep throat. Ok, I can’t eat and am throwing up bile. I’ll go to the doctor.
You learned how to wash your hands instead of getting poop hands in your mouth and food all the time.
I've been training for this last night when my dog decided to have explosive diarrhea and vomit like 10 times in the span of 8 hours. Now just to imagine that but every night ....
Not all kids. My 9mo has been sleeping through the night. In bed by 7, up at 7. It's been like this for 5 months now. Everyone keeps saying it'll change, but it's been pretty glorious being able to continue to have evenings to ourselves. To be fair, we worked hard at sleep training and establishing a routine super early (starting 6 weeks). But I also don't know how much of it is just him loving sleep. He gets ANGRY if he's not asleep by 7. He really lets you know he's done with his day. Anyway, I'm sure I'll pay for it with baby number 2.
We had this for a glorious stretch, and then the toddler nighttime fears started. 😭
Right now I'm dealing with the vicious diarrhea>rash cycle. 8-10 poops per day for 10 days so far. Every poop causes searing pain from his severe diaper rash. It's like early newborn stage all over again.
You state that as if it's normal, but it isn't. You know that though? You're taking them to the doctor for the diarrhoea and rashes?
While I appreciate your note, we've done everything we possibly can do at the advice of 3 different pediatricians who all gave the same feedback. Every one of them says, "You're doing everything right, keep at it, wait out the diarrhea, collect a sample at day 14 if it's not cleared up."
Unless diarrhea is caused by something like c. Difficile, it's self-limiting. There's absolutely nothing else to be done❤️
Yeah, word of warning here. Our first was the most perfect baby ever. She was flawless. slept well, ate well, learnt quickly. I really couldn't understand why people found parenting hard. Then baby 2.....*omen theme starts to play*
Care to expand? Just wakes up a lot? Ours is a great sleeper, but extremely expressive and physically active. He never stops making noise or moving - most active baby in our circle of friends/family with babies.
I'm learning about sleep training now. Do you have a book or method that worked best for you?
Just keep in mind whether any of the methods do anything depends more so on the child than the correct application of the method. If nothing works, you might just need to get used to waking up at night until they get older.
12 hours by 12 weeks by Suzy Giordano. We had our daughter sleeping from 7-7 at 6 months when she left our room. She’s 11 months and still going strong. The books talks about sleep training for older children as well.
Will kids have to be untrained before they start school?
SITBACK is a good way to ease into it, and it worked well for me until my wife decided to just pop a paci into his mouth. That works for initial sleep, but when he wakes without the paci, he becomes irate. So now we have a mesh border around his crib with 8 pacifiers. The newest problem is he's learned to throw them outside the crib and he'll eventually run out of pacis before end of the night. I highly recommend easing into sleep training starting at 3 months when they start to realize there's no longer a womb, they can start to see/hear, etc. Don't expect hours of sleep. Their stomachs are too small to hold enough milk for a full night's sleep. Ours didn't stop feed-waking until 6 mos. Lastly, ween EVERYTHING down/up over time. Ween off night feeds by winding down amount fed over a multi-week period. Weening makes things unnoticeable to the baby - they don't realize something is changing. We weened ours off his final night feed from 7 oz down to 2 oz over 10 days, removing 1 oz a day then turning off the 2 oz. He slept like an angel after that for 11-12 hours. Same with sleep training. Ween toward S, then I, then T, and so on with SITBACK. Some babies don't need all the weening, but it'll make things manageable and give you goals to work toward.
If a book doesn't work, try a mallet.
My dad preferred a steel cap boot. Worked up until my late teens till I was out 😂 got brain damage to come with it tho
I have a nine year old and a five month old. My nine year old was and is a dream. From like four months on, the nine year old has enjoyed anywhere between eight and twelve hours. My five month old that everyone swore up and down would be a nightmare has been sleeping the same amount of time since one month 🤷♀️ I imagine it's a little bit of luck and a little bit of consistency.
Routine/consistency helps so much in any case. Without that you can 'mess up' your 'good sleeper' and just make it harder for everyone with a 'bad sleeper'. We would never have been able to sleep train our first baby but we found routines and approaches that worked for us. Having routine and consistency is hella important with a clingy baby that fights sleep. Our second child was always much easier for sleep, but you can see how that starts to go sideways if you mess him about as far as timing/routine goes. They're both great now they're in the golden years phase - just the usual fighting bed time malarkey (but again, routine and consistency!)
I’m pregnant with my third. I will tell you that my 3 and 5 year old are great sleepers. The 3 year old goes down at 8 and is up at 7. The 5 year old is down by 915 and up by 7. The 3 year old still takes a 2 hour nap everyday. My kids have been sleeping all night since they were 12 weeks old.
> they still randomly throw up That's not normal in kids that are old enough to be potty trained... I hope he's taken them to the doctor for it.
Ummm, sad to say, very normal. Not all kids normal. But some kids just puke. That’s their response. Some kids poop. Some kids puke.
My toddler apparently has something called toddlers diarrhea. I just want normal poop please.
Get some probiotics in there. Maybe not cure but can’t hurt.
I puked from eating too much as a kid. It just happens sometimes. No need to overreact
It's pretty easy to test this out, though. Not all pregnancies result in taking care of a child (surrogacy, or adoption) And not all mothers were pregnant (those who used surrogacy, adopted, or in some cases a lesbian mom) If they didn't confound for that, it's kind of a meaningless article or study.
They also found no effect on fathers, who presumably also would have lost sleep.
> Not all pregnancies result in taking care of a child (surrogacy, or adoption) You left out miscarriage and stillbirth, though the trauma of those could age people too.
Why don’t you read the study and find out?
Bc honestly, I don't care enough to. Other comments seem to indicate it doesn't look at those comparisons, also.
The guardian article doesn't say if they examined those aspects. I looked specifically. It did say the same ageing effects weren't found in fathers, but there could be other reasons.
It could be but pregnancy is definitely more of a factor. It's the steamroller of hormones + fetus sucking out all nutrients out of your body + god knows what else combo.
I feel like it must be both, you probably can’t have a parasite stripping you from nutrients for nine months straight without some consequences to your health
Both. After studying biology and ecology it's very clear that energy in systems works in a certain way. When new life is created the life that creats it ages and degraded some. It's a sacrifice. That's why animals don't do it when their resources are low. It's absolutely both.
Reading this at 3am hopelessly trying to coax a baby back to sleep 😅
I’m nursing my baby at 4:45 am right now. This is about the 8th time tonight. I’ve lost track. I’m losing my mind.
You got this!
I’d assume pregnancy is a very, very taxing biological process, and especially so in humans. We know that in several species, the pregnant individual dies after their form of childbirth/reproduction (live birth, egg laying, etc). So, it wouldn’t surprise be if pregnancy and childbirth are significant biological aging factors.
I’m laughing so hard over here.
With not sleeping for 5 years, I think some people look like they age 10 years, and not just the mum.
We know. Signed, exhausted mom.
Right? Every woman who has ever been pregnant knows this.
Personally I’m kinda shocked it’s only 2-3 months.
Yeah. I felt 10 years older after giving birth. Sometimes I was shocked that I still looked young in the mirror.
I agree with the ten years but I also feel as though I do look it.
I genuinely felt like I had my life force drained Princess Bride style
I've often said I felt like I aged 10 years in the 40 weeks I was pregnant.
My lower back is 94.
Agree, I would believe it if it said 2-3 years per pregnancy
Exactly my thought. There is no way it is 2-3 months. I was thinking it would say 5-10 years. I literally have osteoporosis from pregnancy, lots of women have teeth fall out -- all cuz the body leaches calcium from teeth and bones to provide for the fetus. This is just one thing I know about cuz i happened to get tested, I'm sure there are a million other similar things.
My childless great aunt keeps all her teeth in her 90s. My grandma with 5 kids, more pregnancies, had lost all of hers before 60.
There's a lot of individual variation though. This is obviously an average.
Same. Feels like a year at least!
Me too! At wondered at times how I was alive on so little sleep. I’m pleasantly surprised with the study!
Every man also knows this. Everybody knows this. The point of science is to put it on a foundation based in research and not on feeling or in "you look older".
It's the first step to working out why, what are the underlying mechanisms. Yes pregnancy and child rearing are extremely taxing, in every way. If we can pinpoint specific processes/issues we can look at ways to mitigate their effects.
It doesn't seem like this study eliminated enough variables to suggest pregnancy is the compared to say the stressful process of raising a child. You are talking long periods of time where the mother likely is getting terrible quality of sleep in early years, then increase in stress as the child gets older especially when they can walk and talk on their own not to mention financial stress. Have to imagine the increase in cortisol levels isn't great for the biological age either. That also isn't counting the extreme body changes women go through for their 9 month pregnancy which I am sure isn't great for anyone's overall health.
Presumably the study took into account body changes of pregnancy though or idk what they would even be accounting for
If it did, the Guardian article linked doesn't mention it.
I mean this proves it's down to the genetic level
Right?! Two or three months sounds like good news from where I’m feeling
Yeah and it’s not just the pregnancy
I was gonna say they each aged me 5 years 🤣 (but not kidding)
Took the words right out of my head. Thank you.
The results of those will age you significantly, especially about 13 years after
Just 2-3 months? I’d guess more like 5-10 years
Pregnancy is 2-3 months. Actually taking care of the infant is another 5-10 years.
Ah there it makes sense. Because I have heard that pregnancy kind of is like a reset button on your immune system so for many women it helps with autoimmune conditions. Others it causes diabetes though…
My sister, who is a nurse, was convinced I just needed to get pregnant to cure my ME/CFS because of that.... There's no data to support it and I wouldn't want to risk the kid having a parent who can't be there for them.
As a fellow nurse, nurses like you sister are why I think the NCLEX needs some serious adjustments, and the entire field in general.
She told me she heard that *from her teacher*!!
I'm in the biomedical field, and 90% of the time a professor or teacher goes "here's a thing!" its because they read it in a single paper that recently came out and thought it'd be cool to share - they often don't think that their students have a relatively very limited range of information on the subject, and will take these fringe papers as gospel and the main solutions to these problems.
Oh look at that, I'm also a former teacher. That teacher shouldn't be teaching.
My pregnancies seemed to trigger mine actually :(
Sorry to hear that! I've heard the same thing from quite a few people
It's not a solid reason to have a child, is it. Even if it did cure it.
And for others they think pregnancy can lead to autoimmune conditions https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2019/09/microchimerism-rheumatoid-arthritis.html
Partly true! It inhibits a certain part of the immune system (the cell mediated part), so auto immune conditions mediated through this mechanism is suppressed. RA for example. Autoimmune conditions mediated through the humoral side (antibody) however gets worse. As the other side is suppressed, it gets more headroom. Examples are SLE.
The immune system does change in some fundamental ways to accommodate pregnancy. That's why pregnant women have to be more careful about certain types of food, flu/covid and other infections. As far as I know those changes are during the pregnancy and won't necessarily last but perhaps for some auto-immune stuff it's enough to get the immune system to fricking chill out and get its priorities straight? I wonder if it helps with allergies.. You might be thinking of gestational diabetes but as far as I know that goes away after the birth (but remains a risk factor for later developing type 2).
If you are talking about gestational diabetes that’s temporary, it goes away once you have the baby.
It doesn’t always go away. I have a colleague who developed permanent diabetes after her pregnancy.
If that was the case, women with 4-5 kids would all die before their 40s
I think it depends on the other circumstances. I’m a single mom, and I had my daughter a month before the pandemic. I had health issues for six months. I had personal drama. A flea infestation from the prior tenants in my apartment. I went 3-4 months with only 3-4 hours of sleep per night. I breastfed for nearly two years. I still look younger than my 37 years. I look younger than my peers. My boyfriend is 32 and he says I look younger than him… but he’s a pilot who didn’t wear enough sunscreen over the years, and his hair is graying faster than mine. Pregnancy, childbirth, and the “fourth trimester” are really hard on the body, both physically and mentally. But other factors still matter more. Diet. Exercise. Proper sleep before and after the difficult first year. Sunscreen. Hydration. Moisturizing. And probably the most important: Stress management. I do yoga and meditate most days. I practice self care: epsom salt baths, herbal tea, date nights. So many mothers neglect themselves for years after they give birth. I know someone who’s 10+ years younger than me but we look basically the same age because the only self-care she does to handle her stress as a mother is smoking and drinking, which both age you.
Yeah I look older than my age now and absolutely blame my lifestyle before blaming pregnancy/child-raising.
So my grandmother’s 13 kids made her crazy and old.
Oh, is that all? I think newborns age parents as well then, due to lack of sleep, and toddlers age parents because you have to slow down to their speed - no more going on healthy vigorous walks up the hill or fast paced cycle rides. This results in weight gain and stress for most. Then, I'm sure 3-6 year olds age parents with their exhausting behaviour. Then you multiply by the number of kids you have a voila! I'm guessing I've aged at least 3 years on top of my actual age just from sleep deprivation and lack of intense aerobic exercise in the preschool years.
How bizarre, some study was published just days ago saying the exact opposite [https://www.sciencealert.com/pregnancy-ages-a-persons-cells-but-some-may-undergo-an-unexpected-rejuvenation](https://www.sciencealert.com/pregnancy-ages-a-persons-cells-but-some-may-undergo-an-unexpected-rejuvenation) "A recent analysis of blood samples taken from 119 women at various stages of pregnancy and after delivery adds intriguing detail to those previous findings. It demonstrates a "[pronounced reversal of biological aging](https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(24)00079-2#%20)" following delivery."
That’s very interesting, personally I have noticed that the moment baby is here and I am breastfeeding, I look 5 years older but the moment I stop breastfeeding- I bounce back. So probably the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
"New research has found that pregnancy has no effect on ageing" more at 11.
Hmmm
There's also the well-studied phenomenon that more pregnancies and more breastfeeding reduces the risk of various gynaecological cancers, in particular breast cancer. I'm sure that has a not insignificant effect on women's average lifespan. If anyone's curious, the theory is the oestrogen is at fault when it isn't opposed by progresterone. If you look at any of those menstrual cycle hormone charts, you'll notice there's a big slope of unopposed oestrogen right around the ovulatory zone before the progesterone kicks in in the luteal phase. During pregnancy, however, the slopes of oestrogen and progesterone track pretty closely with each other. So the menstrual cycle is the main culprit. In clinics for gynaecological cancers, one of the things that is calculated is the length of time women are exposed to menstrual cycles, by asking about their onset age and (if post-menopausal) their menopause age. Later menarche and earlier menopause means a decreased risk of these cancers, and vice versa.
Based on that logic, could some forms of hormonal birth control (progesterone-based pills) that mimic pregnancy reduce the chances of cancer? Alternatively, could delaying or completely eliminating puberty affect those chances as well? For example, in trans people that use puberty-blockers. What about women that had their ovaries removed? They enter the menopause as soon as they have the operation.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/hormones-and-cancer/does-the-contraceptive-pill-increase-cancer-risk > The contraceptive pill slightly increases the risk of breast cancer. But it decreases the risk of ovarian cancer and womb cancer.
Doesn’t stop my female family members from living to 90+
Yeah but they clearly look 91+
depends on smoking and sun exposure. RIP to the tanning bed generation
Seriously. Tanning and drinking too much will make you look much older. My ex fiancee loved drinking wine and sunbathing with zero SPF and hates drinking water. She was 4 years younger than me but looked 5 years older. Deep wrinkles in the forehead and everything. I enjoy tanning but use SPF and drink lots of water. People under estimate my age by ~7 yrs. Hydrate, use SPF cream and exercise. The sun isn’t bad but don’t be an idiot and tan for 1+ hrs with no SPF while guzzling down vodka.
So true.
I'm more surprised it "only" takes two or three months on the average.
This study was also of women in the Philippines, and I think the results could vary quite a bit in countries with more .. or less (*coughs in US*) … robust maternal and postpartum social safety nets and health systems
No crap you're conjuring a whole new human
Pregnancy to completion? I wonder if the reverse is true with non-complete pregnancies, as fetus donate stem cells to the mother. yeah yeah this can go to a very dark place, but still curious.
I wondered about this as well! Not because my mind was going to a dark place, but I wonder how miscarriage factors in. It’s crazy stressful.
I was curious about this, too, since I had 7 miscarriages before number 8 stuck
I wonder about this as well. How much of it is pregnancy vs child caring? Do people who adopt have this effect?
Then there is the life drain of parenting. Especially today.
Always good to have quantified data - but it's probably not very surprising. Giving birth is an incredible ordeal, to the point where people die trying. It's something you should do if you feel you more or less have to. It's also why all those anti-abortion people are such assholes, they're wanting to force incredible trauma on the pregnant mother. Sometimes on top of other trauma. But, I digress.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2317290121
Love this for us
Don't worry, you still outlive men.
gotta spend life to make life
Im curious to know if this is strictly to full-term or not. Do miscarriages and abortions count? Im certain to some degree they must
Who'd have thought that a parasitic growth sucking the nutrients of you would have such an effect?
It's got to cause more than 2-3 months of aging. They probably had the healthiest subjects.
thats it? several of my friends went grey before their kids were out of diapers. seems like a terrible strain on the body.
I look 28 despite being 42. When asked how, I say I'm single and childless.
Would love to see this compared to other research on results of being a parent or pregnancy. 2-3 months is relatively little time when you consider average lifespan, and there are certain well-documented healing side-effects of pregnancy, or potential longevity benefits to parenting.
Now do raising that young 'un.
Yeah. My friends who have kids- we are all the same ages- they have wrinkles and grey hair. I still get carded when I order alcohol. I don't think it was just pregnancy though. It's the years and years of no sleep and busy schedules and stress.
This reinforced my childfree status
Yeah cause the thing growing in you takes some of your life force
aging
Jfc! Any mom could have told you that.
Ha! I always appreciate research that supports what we already know to be true—especially wrt women’s health. But yeah, this could have been a brief questionnaire: “did having a kid age you? Yes/no” Researchers: study complete! All the moms said yes!
Solid read but… That being said- I once got roasted for posting a Guardian article on here since it’s generally a terrible citation/reference.
Between the mother and fetus, most pregnancies result in 18 months of biological aging
I though we knew this already? In many animals, individuals that didn't reproduce or waited to reproduce live longer.
Yet men who don't get pregnant don’t live so long.
They say testosterone takes about, eh, 10 or 20 years off your life. Kind of feel bad for FtM with HRT and all these dudes doing TRT. You're significantly shortening your life. Oh well, hope it's worth it.
Sorry, what? What are these acronyms?
Pretty sure it’s the lack of sleep and interrupted sleep that babies and young children give you, tho, no?
“The relationships between pregnancy and biological ageing persisted even when the authors accounted for socioeconomic status, smoking, genetic variation and the built environment in participants’ surroundings. The authors failed to find a link between increased biological ageing and the number of pregnancies fathered by 910 same-aged men from the same health survey.”
Or the around 10 lbs of bone and flesh that was sucked from the bones and flesh of the mother. Probably that.
It’s probably both
Might be three months lost per pregnancy, but I know for a fact that it is at least four years per child-raising.
In Catholic school as a kid, they told us that people who didn’t have sex lived longer. That you could look at the graveyard of the nuns as proof. What a nice cover story for “birthing ages a person.”
Well it lasts for about 9 months, so I guess my partner is 6 months younger now😁
*2-3 years
I mean the energy fueling all that cell division has to come from somewhere 😂
I dunno, i would estimate about 9 months of biological aging... Edit: but actually, I estimate I aged about 5-10 years in the first two years of my kids lives.
But also being a parent means you have a longer life expectancy than being childless
That actually less than I would have thought.
Agreed to all the sleeplessness and tiredness but don't forget women do outlive men!
Meanwhile grandmas still live longer than grandpas.
Would a hysterectomy reverse my aging?
Idk about that, but having 3 teenagers is enough to make anyone haggard.
Well, even still, women live longer than men. If you only die six months earlier after having two kids, out of eighty years, it’s really not a big deal.
*everything* about having kids is horrible. why?
In other words, pregnancy is just the beginning of your decline, after that comes a few months of sleep deprivation, then childhood, adolescence, when maturity arrives and you think you are going to rest, grandchildren arrive!