Excerpt from The Birth Center Client Manual
As anyone who has ever been pregnant knows, pregnancy is not just a physical state. The hormonal changes associated with pregnancy, particularly with the fluctuation in estrogen and progesterone levels, have a tremendous effect on a woman’s psychological state. Further, pregnancy is a developmental state in itself as the mother and partner prepare for the incorporation of a new member into the family structure. The following is a simple breakdown of some of the psychological changes that may occur during the three trimesters. Keep in mind that everyone is different; each person experiences these changes to varying degrees.
We hope that with the recognition of how normal and common these feelings are, you will be reassured of your normalcy as a pregnant couple.
Keep reading for a breakdown by trimester of physical and emotional changes.
Psychological Characteristics of Pregnancy (Mother)
1st Trimester
- Joy, ambivalence
- Physical changes
- Establishing reality of pregnancy
- Variance of sexual appetite
- Beginning of concern with relationship with own mother
- Begin to form personally relevant, unique, mothering identity, separate and apart from own mother
- Fear of miscarriage
2nd Trimester
- “Quiet months”
- Threat of miscarriage over
- Beginning of preparation: response to maternity clothes and baby things
- Feel of movement of fetus
- Fear of injuring baby
- Dependency transfer to partner
- Realization that changes cannot be controlled
- Eagerness to involve partner by having him or her feel the baby move
- Increased emotional involvement with partner
- Overly concerned with partner’s safety
- Hypercritical of partner’s attitudes
- Working out shift in dependency from mother to partner
- Often increased sexual appetite
3rd Trimester
- Pride and fulfillment
- Anxiety, anticipation
- Biologically based dominance
- May be more religious and transcendent
- Issues of daily life—hardships, work
- Interest in baby
- Nesting
- Naming
- Body image feelings
- Insomnia
- Concern and irritation with baby, uterus displacing internal organs, kicking ribs, etc.
- Conflicts: preparing to be a mother, feeling like an infant herself
- Anticipation of labor—Braxton-Hicks contractions—when is it real?
- Change from care-receiver to caregiver
- Worry of precipitous labor and delivery
- Need for reassurance from partner
- Beatific phase of existence
- Desire of friends to participate
- Heightened sexuality, but psychological and physical factors may inhibit sexual acts
- Labor and delivery
General
- Fascination with death and dying
- Fear of partner dying and of being left alone with baby
- Altered state of consciousness: acute openness to inner world, relevance to outer world diminishes to inner emotional lability (refers to something that is constantly undergoing change or something that is likely to undergo change.)
Partner
- What kind of parent will I be?
- Dreams and fantasies.
- Vicarious participation.
- Fear or challenge of taking care of mother and child.
- Wanting to flee.
- Fear of additional financial responsibility.
- Envious competitive feelings.
- Shifting relationship to partner.