Emotional Changes During Pregnancy

Topic Overview

Pregnancy prompts your body to make lots of hormones. These hormones can affect your mind and your body. It's common to feel tired, forgetful, or moody. And you also may be focused on other things, like body changes, symptoms, money worries, and all the ways your life is about to change.

It is common to go through many changes in a pregnancy. Here are some examples:

• First trimester. Extreme fatigue or morning sickness can affect your daily life. Many women feel moody (as with premenstrual syndrome). It's common to feel happy or anxious about a new pregnancy. Or maybe you feel upset if your pregnancy wasn't planned.
• Second trimester. Fatigue, morning sickness, and moodiness usually improve or go away. You may feel more forgetful and disorganized than before. You may feel lots of emotions about things like the way you look or feeling the baby move.
• Third trimester. You may still feel forgetful. As your due date nears, it is common to feel more anxious about the childbirth. You may worry about how a new baby will change your life. As you feel more tired and uncomfortable, you may be more irritable than before.

For some women, serious anxiety or depression problems improve during pregnancy. For others, they do not improve. Do you get no pleasure from daily life? Do you have a lot of trouble sleeping? Do you feel sad, tearful, or guilty? Or anxious, irritable, hopeless, or worthless? Have you had big changes in your appetite, or do you have trouble concentrating? If so, talk to your doctor or midwife. Without treatment, mental health problems can get in the way of a healthy pregnancy.