Aftershocks in the Womb

This book explores the hidden impact of disasters on pregnant women and their unborn children, revealing how events like floods, bushfires, and earthquakes can trigger maternal stress responses that shape fetal development and extend across generations. Drawing from landmark studies such as the Queensland Flood Study and Hurricane Sandy cohort, it combines compelling human stories with rigorous scientific evidence from fields like perinatal psychiatry and developmental epigenetics. Key concepts include disaster-exposure measurement, placental transcriptomic analysis, and cortisol regulation, with a focus on the critical first 1,000 days of life. The book highlights the gap between WHO and Lancet recommendations on climate-linked mental health and their implementation in disaster planning. Unique features include practical toolkits for clinicians and policymakers, ensuring complex science is both engaging and relevant. Aftershocks in the Womb is essential for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to integrate perinatal mental health into disaster preparedness. It offers a consolidated synthesis of current evidence and deployable strategies, illuminating the intergenerational consequences of unaddressed maternal stress and providing solutions to safeguard future generations in an era of increasing climate extremes.