Prenatal diagnoses of congenital heart disease (CHD) is a significant event that causes parental stress and anxiety. The presence of elevated cortisol in a pregnant person's blood can lead to placental transfer of this stress hormone and subsequently downregulate the fetus' own cortisol production through negative feedback mechanisms. Babies with CHD often require very stressful interventions postnatally that necessitate a properly functioning hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in order to mount a sufficient cortisol mediated stress response. We sought to investigate the relationship between maternal stress during pregnancy and need for neonatal steroids.