A fit and healthy pregnancy - What's happening to me?Discovering that you are pregnant is usually a time of great excitement; it also heralds a huge emotional journey that takes most of us by surprise.
Pregnancy (especially with your first child) is the beginning of a new life stage, as a parent. It also has a big impact on a woman’s physical body, with both hormonal changes and changes in your body shape – and all this co-incides with the beginning of a new life-long relationship with your unborn child. No wonder it’s emotional!
Of course, there will be lots of feelings that come up at this significant time – not all of them positive; it’s all pretty normal and having a bit of an idea of what is to come might help you prepare a little better.
Mood Swings while pregnant
Pregnancy involves some fairly heavy-weight hormones which usually induce some wildly fluctuating changes in your emotional state (although it may not, everyone does respond differently.)
You may feel elated, and just a few hours later feel upset. Crying bouts are not unusual.
You may be feeling forgetful and pre-occupied (in fact, a recent study showed that over 80 percent of pregnant women had periods of absent-mindedness during pregnancy).
You may also find yourself becoming over-sensitive and perhaps over-reacting to small problems, or getting frustrated and irritable more often.
It’s OK to have these feelings but it’s not very fair to take them out on your partner or close friends, family or workmates. Not very fair – but pretty common.
You don’t need to feel guilty or ashamed about reactions that you wouldn’t normally experience, but it is important to be aware that you may be acting outside your normal pattern – and you should be prepared to apologise and explain yourself to people you care about.
Dealing with pregnancy Fears
It is very normal when you are pregnant to worry about your baby’s health. You may find yourself poring over baby books and websites and becoming anxious about your child being born ill or disabled or about problems like miscarriage or premature delivery.
Make sure you attend all your pre-natal check-ups and discuss your fears with your doctor or health care provider if you are very concerned. Most fears can be addressed by getting more information, and feedback about how your own pregnancy is going will often help to alleviate anxiety.
Follow recommendations for healthy eating, rest and exercise to help you feel good about the outcome of your pregnancy.
Most women feel worried about how they will cope with labour and birth, whether they will handle the pain and whether they will embarrass themselves by screaming or losing control of their bladder or bowels.
Once again, getting more information from a reliable source can help you address these fears. Every woman’s experience of birth will be different, so don’t be intimidated by other people’s personal stories.
Enrolling in a class that teaches about labour and childbirth will give you some strategies, positions, breathing exercises and tips that will prepare you better and hopefully restore a feeling of control.
Look around next time you are in a busy place – every single person you see was born successfully .. as were the other six billion people on the planet. Try to trust that you will also be OK.
Most new parents feel anxious about whether they will be a good parent and whether they will cope with the demands of a new baby – or a teenager!
Most childbirth classes also cover information on caring for newborns and there is lots of information around for you to learn. It can be hard to find a balance between feeling ignorant and feeling overwhelmed by too much information and conflicting advice.
If you have not grown up with babies around you, it can seem quite foreign and intimidating. It might help to spend some time with a friend who has a baby to help you feel a bit more confident.
Hopefully you will have a support network, your partner and/or family and friends, who will help you in the early days. There are also community resources to help you, such as early childhood nurses who usually provide free clinics to new parents.
Coming to terms with your new life
Whether your pregnancy was unplanned and unexpected or a long wished-for event, some time during your pregnancy, a stark reality will hit you: that you will be a parent for the rest of your life.
Most new parents feel mixed emotions, no matter how excited they were about pregnancy. This is part of the normal psychological journey that you will experience as you progress towards the arrival of your new baby.
On the one hand, the birth of your baby will be a wonderful life-event and at last you will meet the new person you have created and enjoy the wonderful experience of raising your own child in your own family.
On the other hand, your whole life will change; you are emotionally, physically and financially responsible for raising a child for many years to come and there’s no going back.
You may feel less confusion about the conflicting feelings you are bound to experience, once you have spent some time thinking about the implications of parenthood and understanding the reality.
Hopefully you will be able to discuss your hopes and plans with your partner or supportive friends and family.
When you start to think about the reality of the journey ahead, it is very normal – and healthy - to experience a range of feelings and concerns. Going through these rationally will help you to cope better with your pregnancy and prepare for your new life.
Dreams during pregnancy
Many pregnant women report disturbing, terrifying or just plain weird dreams or nightmares about their baby or about childbirth.
This is very normal and probably happens because you have some underlying (or not so underlying) fears about what is happening.
If you have thought about your new life as a parent and you have accepted, and started to prepare for, the big changes ahead, your dreams may start to become less frequent.
Try not to dwell on bad dreams and remember not to take them literally; they are not real – so don’t give them any power.
You might find that listening to some calming music or distracting yourself by watching a movie or reading a book will help you recover from the fears that come up in dreams.
body changes during pregnancy
Though everyday life suggests otherwise, our magazines and movie screens are so populated with thin humans that any other shape may seem abnormal.
In just a few months of pregnancy, your body will change from the shape you have been used to for most of your adult life to that of a pregnant woman – and that usually means you will have larger breasts, wider hips and a beautiful baby bump at the front.
Lots of pregnant women find their rapidly changing body somewhat alarming and a little surreal. Later in pregnancy, when your baby starts moving independently and you can see a limb stretch across the inside of your belly, it’s easy to feel that your pregnant belly doesn’t belong to you at all.
Pregnancy is a wonderful, sensuous and beautiful phase in a woman’s life and ancient art shows that human culture has celebrated this shape for thousands of years.
However for women who have spent much of their life worried about their weight or body shape conforming to the skinny Western ideal, becoming a curvy fertility goddess can be quite confronting.
Trashy magazines that applaud celebrities who “regain their body” after having a baby can make many pregnant women worry that they are getting fat and won’t be able to return to an ideal shape.
Attending pregnancy exercise classes and spending time with other pregnant women can help you appreciate your pregnant body and realise that it is normal and beautiful.
Pregnant women – particularly towards the end – can also attract lots of attention from other people, because we are genetically programmed to find pregnancy attractive.
Enjoy the attention, if you can, and don’t forget to celebrate your pregnancy as a time of beauty and purpose, when your body is doing exactly what it was built to do.
Serious emotional issues - antenatal depression
Whether you have a history of mental health issues or not, pregnancy can impact on your mental health. It’s important to be aware of this and to get some help if you think that the emotional changes you are having may be more serious.
Some women find that during pregnancy they experience relief from pre-existing problems with depression, anxiety or other mental health issues. For others, pregnancy can trigger an onset of problems.
If you are experiencing negative feelings for more than a few days, talk to someone you can trust about your feelings.
Feeling flat and disinterested in your normal daily activities, ongoing insomnia, feelings of sadness and hopelessness that don’t go away, feeling worthless and guilty, losing your appetite and finding it difficult to concentrate for any period of time can all be signs of a problem.
But unfortunately many of the things that may indicate a more serious problem are also things that are normal pregnancy side-effects, so it can be difficult sometimes to tell if you are having a normal pregnancy or if you might need some extra support.
There are many professional services that are available for advice, including free telephone hotline services, where you can seek reassurance and information.
It’s important to realise that the risk for depression and other mental illness in women is highest during their childbearing years – and that there is lots of help available.
There is more information about antenatal depression on the Black Dog website.
Where to get counselling and supportWhere to get help if you are concerned about serious emotional changes: By Fran Molloy – journalist and mum of 4
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