Pregnancy-specific stress. Pregnanc

Pregnancy-specific stress. Pregnancy-specific hassles and uplifts were assessed by the Pregnancy
Experience Scale (PES; DiPietro, Ghera, Costigan, &Hawkins, 2004). This scale was developed to measure maternal appraisal of exposures to daily, ongoing hassles and uplifts specific to pregnancy and contains 41 items (e.g., ‘‘Clothes and shoes don’t fit,’’‘‘How much the baby is moving,’’ ‘‘Making nursery arrangements’’). The PES structure was modeled on the nonpregnancy Hassles and Uplifts Scale (DeLongisDeLongis,Folkman, & Lazarus, 1988). Respondents indicate the degree to which each item has made them feel ‘‘happy, positive, or uplifted’’ and ‘‘unhappy, negative or upset’’ on 4-point scales ranging from 0(not at all) to 3 (a great deal). The scale has high internal reliability (a5.91 – .95) and both convergent and discriminant validity with existing measures of general affective intensity, anxiety, stress, and depression(DiPietro, Ghera et al., 2004). Scoring for this analysis was based on intensity values (i.e., sum of scores divided by the number of endorsed items) for both hassles (PES Hassles) and uplifts (PES Uplifts). The PES was administered at 32 weeks gestation.