Mother taboos, do they still exist? In this series we deal with the latest undisputed issues surrounding motherhood. This week: you were so looking forward to that pregnancy and now that it has come, you are not enjoying it. How is that possible?
Door: Anna JacobsVera and her partner took more than three years to conceive. “After it finally worked, I didn’t feel the relief or happiness I expected. Initially I did, but within a few days it turned into a gloomy and depressed feeling. I became very confused: this pregnancy, this baby, I wanted that so badly? Then why didn’t I feel happy? I was ashamed of my feelings, because everyone around me was over the moon with our news.”
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“Pregnancy can be an emotional time. One minute you feel happy and elated, the next you are stressed and insecure,” says Dorien Yassa, mental health psychologist and owner of online psychology practice Mom & Mind.
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“Because you are going through physical and mental changes and the hormones are coursing through your body, it is normal to experience ups and downs in your mood and feelings. mood? Is your interest or pleasure in almost all activities markedly diminished? You may be dealing with prenatal depression.”
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Poor sleep, nausea, little appetite
About ten to 20 percent of women suffer from depression or depressed feelings during pregnancy, reports the National Knowledge Center for Psychiatry and Pregnancy, among others. Prenatal depression, or pregnancy depression, can occur at any time during pregnancy. According to Yassa, it can be difficult to recognize depression during pregnancy, because things like poor sleep, nausea or lack of appetite, are also just part of a pregnancy.
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You can be happy with your pregnancy and experience feelings of sadness and unhappiness.
Expectations and Reality
“In my practice, I regularly see women who have more difficulty conceiving or who have undergone a fertility process for years, for example,” says Yassa. “In addition to the psychological challenges that come with such a process, there are sometimes also certain expectations about when it will be possible to become pregnant. These expectations sometimes do not match the feelings that women experience in reality.”
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Yassa: “Speaking openly about negative feelings during your pregnancy is still taboo, especially after a fertility process. Unfortunately, social opinion is very black and white: you should be happy and happy when you are pregnant. Period. In practice However, there is a much grayer area, because you can be happy with your pregnancy and experience feelings of sadness and unhappiness.”
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Crying a lot
Jaimy experiences that too. “I have never felt the pink cloud that I heard other women talk about. For me it felt more like a gray cloud. In those first weeks I mainly cried a lot, felt stressed, could not concentrate on anything and was very tired “I wanted to stay in bed all day and I didn’t recognize myself at all. I’ve never had depression before and it doesn’t run in our family. That made it a big surprise for me,” says Jaimy, who has now given birth to a baby girl. daughter.
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