By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterWEDNESDAY, June 24, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Want to give your baby the best start in life? Then tend to your heart health, both prior to and during pregnancy, a new study says. Expectant mothers in worse heart health are more likely to have children who suffer from developmental delays, researchers reported June 23 in JAMA Network Open. “Better maternal cardiovascular health during pregnancy was associated with a lower risk of offspring developmental delay at age 4 years,” concluded the research team led by Mami Ishikuro, a senior assistant professor at Tohoku University in Japan. “This association was observed across multiple developmental domains, suggesting that maternal cardiovascular health during pregnancy may be relevant to broad aspects of offspring development,” the research team said. For the study, researchers analyzed data for more than 8,000 mothers who gave birth to children between July 2013 and March 2017 in Japan. The team assessed the mothers’ heart health based on the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 checklist. That framework judges heart health based on …