If you have a chronic illness (or a chronic condition, a mental health condition or other symptoms), you may have wondered if experiences in your babyhood affected your risk, such as being born cesarean or not breastfeeding. Or if your mother being sick during her pregnancy with you, losing a parent when you were still young, or having postpartum depression could have influenced your health.
You may have wondered about possibilities for healing ABEs and their effects, or how to learn if other kinds of adverse babyhood experiences (ABEs) might have affected your health.
This is a compilation of 11 resources for understanding, preventing and healing ABEs.
Any of the options below will help you get started to better understand risk, why it’s not your fault and what you can do about it.
Adverse Babyhood Experiences (ABEs) are a new construct I have developed to help you and your health professionals understand the types of events that shape health in our earliest days. This includes events that occurred before your conception, during pregnancy as well as your labor and birth, and in the first 2 years of your life.
1. The 10 Categories of ABEs
- Maternal loss or trauma
- Low support or loss of support for the mother
- Maternal physical stress, symptoms or illness
- Maternal serious emotional stress or illness
- Complications for mothers
- Complications for babies
- Separation (emotional or physical)
- Birth weight
- Baby did not or could not breastfeed
- Symptoms in parents and babies indicate exposure to ABEs and opportunities for repair
- Other ABEs, including similar stressors for fathers and more
See the detailed list of ABEs in my comprehensive guide, in the downloadable free fact sheet and in the ebook below for examples of the many different kinds of adverse events in babyhood. The first 5 ABEs are events that primarily affect mothers and also affect fathers, while ABEs 6 – 10 primarily affect babies. ABE #10 affects mothers, fathers and babies. There is an 11th question for anything that does not fit into the first 10 categories because ABEs are designed to be inclusive of all kinds of adversities in babyhood.
2. Blog Posts: ABEs and Chronic Illness
Stories to better understand ABEs, inspiration for healing ABEs, the role of antibodies in helping to identify how important ABEs can be in affecting risk, and more.
- Comprehensive Guide to ABEs blog post (see below)
- ABEs in my history
- How healing ABEs can cure asthma (a true story and set of studies)
- Intro to ABEs and autoimmune disease (type 1 diabetes)
- ABEs and type 2 diabetes
- ABEs and ME/CFS
- ABEs and rheumatoid arthritis
- ABEs affects epigenetics and beyond
- My free eBook 4 includes a number of ABEs blog posts (see below)
- People’s stories of ABEs, shared in their “Chrillogs”
3. ABE Fact Sheet to Educate your Doctor
The 5-page fact sheet summarizes ABEs. Print the ABEs overview on one side and the list of references on the other to provide a one pager to give to doctors, CEOs and others. Additional pages provide examples of events for each category of ABE.
- Fact sheet includes:
- 1 page introduction
- 1 page summary of ABEs, the research
- 1 page of references
- Examples of ABEs for each category
- Example of an optimal birth
- Resources for support and healing
The form will appear momentarily.
4. My ABEs Online Class on Demand
4. Part of a 6 Part Lecture Series Course with Panel Discussion
My class is the 4th lecture in a course available online through Pre and Perinatal Professional Kate White’s The Impacts of Adverse Prenatal and Birth Events: A Transdisciplinary Approach.
It is appropriate for health professionals, adults with chronic illness and other symptoms, parents and parents-to-be, and more.
The Course Includes:
- an overview of the 10 ABEs that influence long-term health
- differences between ABEs and ACEs
- stories of what ABEs look like (and how underestimated they often are)
- how ABEs and their effects can be repaired and prevented
- stories about asthma in a child who recovered, and type 2 diabetes in an adult that has stabilized
5. Spirit Into Form: New Book With Exercises for Healing ABEs
If you’re an adult with chronic illness, an exciting, gentle, friendly new book has just arrived that offers examples of prenatal, labor and birth events that can impact your symptoms and flares with chronic illness. It offers the blueprint for how we are designed to heal, and exercises for exploring your own prenatal and birth history. Spirit Into Form is the kind of book you can use as a reference and a resource, reading it for a while, exploring an exercise, and then allowing the process some time and space to evolve and process.
I learned new things for my own healing journey, including working with “umbilical affect,” which refers to how a baby’s need to take in nourishment directly through the umbilical cord in the womb can conflict with their need to keep out what is harmful or unhelpful, such as maternal emotions of fear or overwhelm.
Author Cherionna Menzam-Sills is a friend and colleague and describes having been gestating this “baby and birth” for 17 years. And it is finally here! Cherionna is a craniosacral therapist who has also trained extensively in pre and perinatal work including teaching and applying it in her own health and healing, some of which she shares in her book. Cherionna is a fellow graduate of somatic psychology at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She facilitates small group birth process / womb surround workshops. Her book is an important new resource and I have added it to the updated ABEs Fact Sheet. You can find her on facebook and her website.
Consider asking your library to get it or obtain your own copy:
amazon usa: amazon.com:https://www.amazon.com/…/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3
amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/…/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3
amazon.com.au: https://www.amazon.com.au/…/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3
6. The Comprehensive Guide to ABEs
This Comprehensive Guide to ABEs is my most detailed blog post on ABEs. It provides an overview with the science about risk for chronic illness and other effects of adversity we experience before our 3rd birthdays. It includes 100 scientific reference articles and examples of treatment, prevention and repair.
The form will appear momentarily.
7. Book 4: A Compilation of ABEs Posts
My free ebook includes 5 blog posts introducing ABEs and how it affects risk for asthma, autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, and more. Available in pdf and kindle formats. It’s an “all-in-one” type of resource and offers inspiration for healing ABEs.
8. My ABEs Journal Article (2020)
My journal article introduces the new construct of ABEs (Adverse Babyhood Experiences). This is a good resource to give to your family doctor, OB/GYN, midwife, pediatrician, hospital department and others.
Thank you to the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (JOPPPAH) for permission to make my article available here for a free download.
The citation is:
Mead, V. P. (2020). “Adverse babyhood experiences (ABEs) increase risk for infant and maternal morbidity and mortality, and chronic illness.” Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health 34(4):1-33.
9. Other Free Journal Articles on ABEs
If you’d like the detailed science that supports ABEs, see my page with free downloadable articles for some of the most influential and substantiating evidence. The articles are free online and I’ve made them accessible for download there.
10. More Resources for ABEs and Healing ABEs
See links to find therapies and therapists for working with effects of pre and perinatal trauma (adults and children). These are primarily somatically based trauma therapies.
APPPAH: the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH)
- See their practitioner database (on their website under “Resources“)
- See APPPAH’s free Monday Live series – Note their free online talk on May 3rd is about umbilical affect with Franklyn Sills, a pioneer, leader and master teacher in the field of biodynamic craniosacral therapy and who is also married to Cherionna Menzam-Sills, who I mentioned above as the author of a new book.) I can’t wait to watch and listen in.
- My blog post on 2019 conference highlights and speakers
- November 19-21, 2021 Online International APPPAH Conference – They are accepting proposals until May 15th approximately. I’ve proposed 2 talks and will provide links here when more information is available)
- Trainings & education at APPPAH
Follow news in trauma and maternal care at the ACEs Connection News Site: ACEs in Maternal Health (ACEs are Adverse Childhood Experiences)
11. Year Long Course Coming in 2025
I’ll be one of a small team of faculty teaching a course with a focus on Adverse Babyhood Experiences (ABEs) with Pre and Perinatal Professional Kate White for health professionals. Coming in fall of 2025. We expect to have a 1 day introductory course with all of us presenting sometime in the spring, live and online. I’ll keep you posted here and in a blog post.
I weighed more than 10 lbs. when I was born (vaginal). My mother never shared that it was difficult, but I imagine it was. Could that be the reason she hated me?
Hi Liza,
I’m so sorry to hear about this kind of experience – and trauma – with your mother. I’ve edited this comment to state more clearly that this is not a child’s fault nor is it caused by a child. For a woman to have hatred towards her child indicates experiences she’s had that cut her off from her own innate capacity to bond. It points to something(s) having lead her to feel disconnected from her baby or antipathy towards her child. This is about her rather than the baby. I suspect this relates to your mother’s own trauma, because trauma disconnects us from ourselves and from others.It can also leave our nervous systems caught in states of fight and flight (such as anger and hatred) or freeze (such as depression, disconnection, emotional absence). I’d be curious about events around the time of your conception, although for this strong of a reaction, I’d suspect prior trauma such as in her babyhood, childhood and her relationship with her own parents and family. This brings in multigenerational trauma as another likely component. I’d also wonder about her relationship with your father. I hope that helps a little. Glad to have you here!
Please write more about Lisa’s question of April 30. As a newborn, I almost died because of neglect and my childhood was marked by consistent physical and emotional neglect, abuse, and rejection. I believe this situation impacts more adults than most doctors and researchers recognize.
Dear P.F.
Yes, these kinds of experiences can be life-threatening both physically/emotionally in actual reality, and can also leave a baby and child feeling their life is threatened from a nervous system perspective that may or may not be conscious and that may or may not seem “real.” Both affect our biology, developing organ systems and immune systems and other organ systems as well as our sense of self, self-love and beyond.
Like other animals, we humans are designed to grow and develop in a nurturing, supporting, loving, safe environment. When we don’t, it can turn some, many or most of our organ systems and cellular function and nervous system perceptions to orient towards threat, become more sensitive to threat and lead to chronic conditions of all kinds – from chronic illness to mental health conditions, to addictions to challenges in relationships later in life and more.
I have grouped adversity into categories to make it easier to tell what we may have experienced. Emotional neglect and rejection fit into a category I refer to as “adverse childhood relationship experiences” or “ACREs.” Abuse is a component of the most well-recognized research known as the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). All are known to have significant potential impacts far beyond what most doctors and researchers have yet to recognize.
We live in a society that is far more traumatized than is generally recognized. For your parents to expose you to this kind of horrific existence speaks to a significant amount of trauma in their own lives, especially in their own babyhoods and childhoods and likely beyond (even though most people who experience trauma do not become abusers themselves they may have more difficulty connecting emotionally unless they do or have done some kind of personal healing).
I hope that helps. Let me know if you have other thoughts or questions. Thanks for asking such an important question.
Thank you so much for your research and sharing it with us. I am a very intuitive person and have long suspected that the trauma in my babyhood and childhood had a far reaching impact on me [psychological/emotional/psychological health] and that the cfs/me episodes I experienced were an extension of the fight/flight survival response as the threat I found myself responding to was often intangible and inescapable in a traditional way. Your work makes a lot of sense to me and I’m very grateful that you have been able to complete it and share it with us! It’s such a relief after decades of being dismissed and often gaslit by the medical world. You are a blessing :)
Hello Zee,
Our intuitive hits have a lot of wisdom and it’s indeed fascinating, relieving and validating when we find evidence that supports these hunches! I’m glad this was helpful. Wishing you well and your me/cfs journey and may you continue to find support and more info that resonates!