Psychological characteristics of women with postterm pregnancies.

Sixty-one women with postterm pregnancies were compared with 72 term controls on scales of life-events, psychopathology, and attitudes towards pregnancy. Contrary to expectations, the postterm women scored lower in psychopathology than the controls. The slope of these scores declined from women with preterm, to those with term and postterm labor, paralleling the known slope for uterine reactivity to oxytocin. Results are interpreted as suggesting a low degree of autonomic and psychologic reactivity in the postterm women.