• Scientists divided 98 women into two groups. Every day, beginning at 20 weeks of pregnancy and continuing until the women gave birth, one group took a daily dose of 4 grams of fish oil, while the other took 4 grams of olive oil. Neither the mothers nor the researchers knew which supplement the women had received until the study ended.
• The researchers examined 72 children born to women who completed the study when the children were 2½ years old. In tests of locomotor ability, speech and hearing, vocabulary and practical reasoning, the children whose mothers were given fish oil during pregnancy scored slightly higher, but the differences were not statistically significant. But after controlling for maternal age, birth weight, breast- feeding and other factors, the children of the women who took fish oil were significantly better at hand-eye coordination than those of the women who took the olive oil supplement.

It isn’t only pregnant woment who should be taking fish oil supplements, says an article on Breastfeed.com. Fish and fish oil supplements contain docosahexaenoic acid, which is beneficial for infant brain development when passed to the child through breast milk.
“There is a lot of good evidence that DHA improves brain development in infants,” Luke R. Bucci, vice president of research at Weider Nutrition International told the web site. “Infants get DHA only from mother’s milk. When the mother eats a daily serving of fish with colored flesh, such as salmon, tuna, sardines or herring, to get enough DHA, or when she takes fish oil supplements, the benefits available to baby are optimized.”

The benefits of fish oils taken immediately after pregnancy and during breastfeeding helps to prevent and to treat postpartum depression. One summary of various studies published at ABC News put it best:

• Scientists first became interested when they noticed that countries with the highest fish consumption had the lowest rates of depression. They also observed that mothers in England who ate very little fish during pregnancy doubled their risk of developing postpartum depression compared to women who ate fish regularly. So scientists began a series of studies to see why.

A daily supplement of fish oil, rather than a daily serving of fish, is generally recommended due to concerns about mercury stored in fish such as tuna, shark and makerel.

For women who have just given birth, supplements are certainly not complete protection against the dangers of sleeplessness, stress and poor nutrition, but they can be a mild insurance against those problems becoming more serious once the newborn period is over.

Post from: Babylune