Untitled Document

Heavy Cannabis Use & Pregnancy

Pediatrics, February 1994, Volume 93, Number 2, pp. 254-260

American Academy of Pediatrics

Comparing the heavily exposed and the non-exposed infants, the Brazelton clusters on day 30, showed that the offspring of heavy-marijuana using mothers had significantly higher scores on:

- orientation

- autonomic stability

- reflexes

- habituation to auditory and tactile stimuli, and to animate auditory stimuli

- higher degree of alertness

- capacity for consolability

- less irritability

- had fewer startles and tremors

- better physiological stability at one month

- required less examiner facilitation to reach an organized state

- more socially responsive

- the quality of their alertness was higher

- their motor and autonomic systems were more robust

- they had better self-regulation

- they were more rewarding for caregivers than the neonates of non-using mothers at one month of age

From the Schools of Nursing, Education and Public Health, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Received for publication Sep. 21, 1992; accepted June 30, 1993.