The pressure’s on – but it doesn’t

When Candice Warner arrived back in Australia after her husband’s role in the Australian cricket team’s ball tampering scandal, she was photographed looking understandably distraught.

What the world didn’t know was that the 33-year-old mother of two (Ivy Mae is 3, and Indi Rae, 2) was also pregnant.

Now, in a new interview with Australian Women’s Weekly, Warner has opened up about suffering a miscarriage just one week after her husband’s public apology.

‘‘I’d have to be bullet-proof for the taunting not to have affected me,’’ she said in the interview. ‘‘It rocked my very foundation and I paid the ultimate price, losing our baby. The miscarriage was a tragic consequence, a heartbreaking end to a horror tour.’’

While Warner is clearly devastated about the loss of a much-wanted pregnancy, her interview has sparked concern among expectant women seeking to discover whether stress can affect the risk of miscarriage.

A meta-analysis published in Scientific Reports in May 2017 found that psychological stress before and during pregnancy can increase the risk of miscarriage by approximately 42 per cent.

The authors suggested the effects of stress hormones, which can impact some of the biochemical pathways essential for maintaining a pregnancy, could be the cause of such findings.

But Dr Raelia Lew isn’t convinced, nor is she alarmed by these results. The fertility specialist from Melbourne IVF and Women’s Health Melbourne, says any study measuring the effect of emotional stress is complex. After all, what one person finds stressful may be water off a duck’s back for someone else.

The research also had other downfalls, including the fact that many of the studies measured stress in different ways.

The researchers noted potential issues, such as recall