1. Skip to navigation
  2. Skip to content
  3. Skip to sidebar

Topics:

Pregnancy mood swings

Pregnancy can throw your emotions into a tailspin. Here's why it happens and how to help

By
//
Originally published in Today's Parent December 2011

It was three o’clock in the morning. Anna Dewar, five months pregnant and utterly pooped from a series of sleepless nights, was prowling around her Toronto apartment. “I noticed my kitchen smelled overwhelmingly like chili,” she says. She figured the garbage bag was leaking and she’d just lift it out and change it. Surprise! “When I took the bag out, it just exploded all over my kitchen floor,” Dewar says. Chili splattered everywhere, and Dewar completely lost it. “I was in hysterics, crying,” she recalls. “Normally, I would laugh. But at three in the morning, totally exhausted, I was feeling like I couldn’t function and my life was over. It was a total overreaction.”

Although Dewar was beyond thrilled to be expecting her first child, she admits there were times when less welcome emotions like anxiety and discouragement temporarily took over. But mood changes are part and parcel of most pregnancies.

“In one day, a woman can feel happy, hopeful, elated, and then have a moment where she’s suddenly sad or worried, or feels very irritable,” says Michal Regev, a psychologist and family therapist in Vancouver. “That’s fairly normal.” It’s also fairly simple to put a few strategies in place that can help even out your mood.

Blame it on biology

Pregnancy and hormonal changes go hand in hand, and some women are more sensitive to these fluctuations than others. If you have a history of premenstrual symptoms that make you want to strangle someone, you’re probably noticing hormone-induced outbursts during pregnancy as well. You might feel angry or weepy. And it doesn’t help that your changing body is exhausted and unrecognizable. “A lot of times I know I’m being snappy and rude. I see it happening, but I don’t have control over it,” says Brittany Hamilton of Souris, Man., pregnant with her fourth child. “I know that after 10 at night, I’m going to be moody and say something I’ll regret, so I just go to bed.”

It can also be tough to keep from worrying about the unknown. Will my baby be healthy? Will childbirth be unbearable? Am I ready to be a mother? Will our marriage survive? Are we headed for the poorhouse? “The more you’re unsure about what’s about to happen, the more anxious and irritable you get,” says Karen Nistor, a doula in Regina, Sask. Women instinctively become extra-cautious during pregnancy, but this can worsen the worrying.

And there’s another way biology interferes with feeling emotionally stable. Ever hear of the nesting instinct? “This is the tendency of pregnant women to make sure that everything is in order, ready for the baby,” says Regev. The instinct gets stronger as the due date approaches, and it can create angst, as it has for Dewar. “I’m suddenly feeling quite anxious that I haven’t organized the house or done anything,” she says. “I’ve started having very vivid dreams about the baby being born and having no crib!”

Please read on for strategies to help you stabilize your moods>

Subscribe to Today's Parent for just $14.95* That's only $1.25 an issue!

May We Also Suggest...

What do you think?