Mother-offspring dialogue in early pregnancy: impact of adverse environment on pregnancy maintenance and neurobiology.

The mother-offspring dialogue begins even before implantation and is essential to signal pregnancy, establish robust contact, and maintain embryo growth and development. Any circumstance that disrupts the dialogue risks pregnancy problems. A new look at how stress impacts on pregnancy involves its adverse effects on the key pregnancy hormones of progesterone and prolactin. These effects have far-reaching consequences on pregnancy maintenance, maternal anxiety and embryo programming. This review focuses on early pregnancy and how stress might compromise the multi-layer, two-way communication between mother and embryo.