Written by Psychologist Nikolina Miljus
We look into emotional challenges that await you in the next nine months, and share ways to prepare for pregnancy mentally so you can enjoy your experience of becoming a mother.
Each pregnancy is a unique experience. It is a time of significant physical, emotional, and social change.
Most of the novelties are unlike anything you’ve encountered so far, especially if you are pregnant for the first time.
When you are a first-time mom, the sheer amount of these changes in your life can quickly become overwhelming.
Not knowing what awaits breeds uncertainty and fear.
Women who gave birth might discover that prior pregnancies leave their impact on each new pregnancy, too.
Even though your pregnancy is a profoundly personal experience, it doesn’t happen in isolation.
Your partner reacts to the pregnancy in his own way, and your close family is a valuable asset that can make your life easier or more difficult.
To help you prepare for challenges that lie ahead, we will start by looking into how the immense physical changes affect your feelings.
Then we discuss how your relationship with your partner changes.
And finally, we’ll see how your priorities in life shift as you prepare to become a mother.
Intense emotions fuelled by hormones can be frightening
The physical changes in pregnancy go far beyond the morning sickness, swollen breasts, or feeling tired.
Your body also starts to produce large amounts of pregnancy hormones HCG, estrogen, progesterone, and oxytocin.
hese hormones help transform your body into a nurturing environment for your baby to develop, but, as a side effect, pregnancy hormones affect your feelings, too.
Most women notice their feelings in pregnancy become more intense and sometimes swing wildly.
That is the reason why at one moment a cute picture from your Instagram feed can drive you to tears while just minutes later you might end up shouting in almighty fury about an unwashed teacup left in the sink.
The shifts like these are only temporary, and the best you can do is to give yourself a few moments until the strong feeling subsides.
The profound hormonal shifts can cause issues that are more complicated when they amplify negative emotions like sadness, anxiety, worry, or stress.
Women who encountered intense anxiety or had depressive episodes in the past can be more susceptible to intense negative emotions in pregnancy.
Recent findings suggest that the single best tool you can use in pregnancy to help you cope with anxiety, fear, and stress in pregnancy is mindfulness.
Knowing how to calm down and refocus when anxiety strikes is not only beneficial to you but can be very important to your baby, since less stressed you are, the baby is more peaceful too.
Taking time to take care of yourself, whether through daily walks, shopping with friends, or yoga classes all provide a boost to your wellbeing.
And, there are plenty of situations that can trigger anxiety, worry, and fear during pregnancy.
One element that can help you cope with the intense emotions or make things more difficult is your relationship with the baby’s father.
The relationship with your partner will be challenged
Women are prone to judge themselves about every ounce of weight they gain or lose even when doing so harms them psychologically regardless of pregnancy.
The way you think about your body can influence how you feel, no matter if your concerns are justified in reality or not.
And, the intense physical changes the pregnancy brings can magnify your fears about your body image thousand times over.
Pregnancy is also a time when you might start feeling as if you are not in control of your body.
You might begin to feel overly insecure in yourself, and this feeling easily reflects on your relationship with your partner.
Thinking that your partner doesn’t find you attractive anymore if you are feeling bad about how you look is only a few steps away.
What can complicate things, even more, is the fact that your sexual desires can reach levels both you and your partner haven’t seen previously.
Other women experience the opposite – they feel an aversion to being touched by their partner, which can make intimate moments almost impossible.
Some men treat this as just another pregnancy side effect, while other men might start feeling confused – something you might perceive as rejection.
You might need more validation, intimacy, and reassurance from your partner, and he needs to know that.
Communicating about how you feel and what you want is the key.
Aside from changes in intimacy levels, the most critical element of your relationship during pregnancy is the change in roles.
Before the pregnancy, you and your partner were lovers and friends, and now you need to become parents.
The experience can be intensely emotional for your partner as much as it can be for you.
The baby’s father experiences pregnancy from his unique point of view, and it can be an intensely emotional period for him, too.
The solution, again, is to talk about what is going on and try to understand each other’s point of view.
The responsibility for a new life can become overwhelming
Becoming a mother involves much more than a physical transformation.
It also brings a significant shift in your sense of responsibility and priorities in life.
Some women notice this transformation more distinctly than others do.
Sometimes thoughts like “How I’m going to be a good mother if hearing a baby cry annoys me?” or similar ones fuel anxiety and insecurity, primarily when you ruminate.
Fears of unknown are reasonable and healthy.
If you are a first-time mom, especially during the first months of pregnancy, you might start wondering when you are “finally” going to start feeling like “a proper mom.”
You might be overwhelmed by morning sickness and other early pregnancy symptoms, or you might just be one of the many women who does not feel their pregnancy makes them feel different in any particular way.
Whether you’ll be able to bond with your baby doesn’t depend on these feelings in any way.
On top of all physical and psychological changes, pregnancy also has an impact on your close social circle.
Your immediate family, friends, and people closest to you all have their unique expectations tied to your pregnancy.
Their support can be critical, but there are also situations in which the lack of support to your pregnancy can be particularly challenging to manage.
Ultimately, one valuable lesson you will need to practice during the nine months of pregnancy is to trust your feelings and judgment and not solely rely on what others expect.
Learn to accept things you cannot change and focus on things you can do
Pregnancy will bring out emotions and situations you haven’t encountered before.
Your emotional capacity will be stretched almost to the breaking point at occasions.
However, no matter how much energy you devote to planning for the delivery and welcoming your baby into the world, the uniqueness of your and your baby’s life is unpredictable.
There will come the point at which you will need to have faith in yourself, your body, and your medical staff.
Planning and preparing are obviously necessary, but you will also need to learn to let go of the control when you need to.
The delivery is a naturally intense experience, and possible complications and medical interventions may happen as well.
It’s how you react and cope with these situations that determines how will they impact you mentally.
It is okay to be scared, sad and angry, even when you are pregnant, as long as these feelings are not long lasting and overshadowing every other aspect of your pregnancy and your relationship.
Feeling different is the staple mark of pregnancy, and there is no need to blame yourself or add guilt to already intense feelings.
Instead, turn to your partner, friends and family and enjoy in small things in life.
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