The article overviews the transmission of maternal depression through prenatal and postnatal pathways. Infants who are exposed to maternal mood disorders during the prenatal stage face the risk of long-term emotional, behavioral, and social problems. Mothers who experience depression during their pregnancy will have babies with higher cortisol levels, as opposed to the babies of the mothers that are not depressed. The infants with higher baseline cortisol levels are those whose mothers were depressed not only during the pregnancy but during infancy as well. “Eighty to ninety percent of maternal cortisol is metabolized while it passes through the placenta, though higher levels of maternal cortisol lead to higher levels of fetal exposure to cortisol
