Pregnant and Miserable
Wah! I thought pregnancy would be fun!
I am sixteen weeks along with my first pregnancy and I am a basket case. I wanted to get pregnant, but now all I do is cry. And when I’m not crying, I’m in a state of panic. I thought I’d be the happiest pregnant woman – a super earth mama, doing yoga and eating fruit and being gorgeous. But I’m a mess. I don’t know if I can do nine months of this. My boyfriend and I have a great relationship, but we’re not sure whether to get married. It just makes me weep to think about making any decisions. I know some other people feel like this in pregnancy, but I can’t understand it. I thought more of this would go away at thirteen weeks when the hormones let up. What do I do now? – Prepartum Depressed
Dear Prepartum,
Pregnancy is a time of massive change on just about every level. Your body is changing all the time: Hormones affect everything from hair to skin to joints to emotions to the way you solve problems and perceive the world. They can cause sleepiness, weight gain, nausea, breathlessness, sluggish digestion & ravenous hunger, to name just a few. Hormones are engine behind the pregnancy and they’ll be at work long after the baby is born for breastfeeding and helping your body adjust back to a non-pregnant state.
So while hormones do change at around thirteen weeks, they continue flowing and changing for a while. Pregnancy hormones are not all bad; sometimes their affects are welcome or at least manageable, but sometimes they’re traumatic or just rotten. Either way, it’s a huge upheaval and can trigger an avalanche of emotions. Plus you’re growing for the first time since adolescence: in the first trimester you actually grow a whole new organ!
And then there are all the other kinds of upheaval, like the whole life-is-about-to-change-irreparably thing. Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s more concerning, the stuff you can predict (drain on the bank account, drain on the sleep) or the stuff you can’t. You don’t know precisely how the baby will affect your relationships, your work, your body. The unknown challenges ahead are enough to make anybody anxious: or depressed.
So why oh why would we expect that every single woman would be nothing but peaches and prenatal poses for the full ten? You know back in the day, our cave-women ancestors weren’t just sitting around reveling in their procreative power. They were planning, preparing, and probably worrying. Ok, we’re not sure of this because we weren’t there, and as far as we know there aren’t any cave drawings of anxious pregnant women. But we do know that since the beginning of time pregnant women have had the same basic concerns: How can I best take care of this baby? Who will help? How will we manage? What are my resources? Where will we be safe?
The answers are going to look a lot different in the modern world; but our point here is that to some extent worrying is a normal, healthy part of pregnancy! The idea of pregnancy as a time of unfettered bliss is lovely, but it’s not the whole truth, or even the truth at all, for many women. So our first bit of advice is to cut yourself free from the idea of the perfect pregnant woman and allow yourself some room for anxiety. Sometimes just letting it in as a normal part of the pregnant experience can reduce it to manageable levels.
The next thing is to realize that though you may feel like all loose ends must be tied in little bows before the baby’s born, you can actually save some decisions until after the baby is born. Your brain will still work when you come out the other side. It’s not now or never.
The final, perhaps most important thing, is to find support. If you don’t happen to have a tribe on hand, you need to seek out other pregnant women you can bond with on the subject of pregnant anxiety. Talking to other pregnant women has been a proven way to help with the stress and isolation and feelings of despair. Offline support groups exist for just these very concerns. If that won’t work for you, you could take it online, where women are often more willing to be honest about the less-fun emotions that come along with gestation.
If you’re still feeling miserable even after you put this into perspective and do some successful bonding, you may want to look into therapy, in group or individual form. Because even though crying is a normal part of pregnancy, it would be nice for you if it weren’t the entirety of it.
Have a question? Email beingpregnant@babble.com
well yeah… and you probably gonna be writing the same kind of letter about parenting, too.. coz it’s not easy. welcome to the club.
I KNOW! That’s why I wrote: My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy. For some reason the misery of pregnancy came as a surprise to me too.Good luck.Andrea
I also experienced tremendous depression during pregnancy. I had fantasies that right before the birth I would be in a car wreck, and that I would die, but that they would save the baby. In retrospect, I see it was hormonal – I do not have a history of depression, and my depression completely lifted after the birth, never to return. So my advice would be to try to develop a little clinical detatchment and understand that your dark mood is almost certainly a pregnancy-related symptom.
Yep, this happened to me too. Also, the first 4 months after birth were hell for me too.BUT, I’m now a happy woman with a gorgeous 8 month old!! Trust me, it goes away. I look back & laugh, at the crazy, psychotic, pregnant woman that I was…I hated the world..lol..(I had a miracle pregnancy that I was extremely grateful for, & I was still miserable…I can honestly say that Hormone’s do NOT play!)
I was the same way. I haaated being pregnant with my last child. I just wanted it to be over with already. Everyday i just thought about how much i hated it. andreaandrea i had the same fantasy over and over again also. sometimes different scenarios, but always the same outcome. Someone saves the baby, im gone and done with it all. Things are a bit better now. I love my baby and my family, but definitely dont want to be pregnant again.
I also had a miserable pregnancy — every complication you can name, months and months on bedrest, endless tests and hospital visits and so on and so forth capped off by an emergency c-section. But motherhood has been wonderful; my little girl was definitely worth all of the suffering. Hang in there.
Yes, it is awful to feel sick and unhappy for such a long time. I am a complete wimp when it comes to discomfort and my poor partner listened to me cry myself to sleep for weeks during my pregnancy. Now that I am a happy mama to a beautiful, healthy one year old I can see that I needed to go through it, all of it. The good and the bad, the fears and the panic. It was all part of my transformation. I was a woman, a daughter, a wife and I became a mother. There is no harder job but you are doing it, right now you are doing it. It will pass and you will be stronger for the next change…there are many to come.
I just wanted to say don’t worry- it will pass. I was miserable in a major way for my first pregnancy. The whole time. It totally sucked on many many levels. BUT, as soon as that baby popped- everything was instantly better. It’s true- there will be times that you still feel like crap even after birth- but everyone feels that way sometimes, even those who don’t have kids. I’m on pregnancy number two and again, it’s terrible. But, it’s sooooo much easier this time knowing that all this stuff will pass when the baby is born. I can remember with the first one being up late at night, alone, crying, depressed, sick thinking- ‘will I EVER feel better again?’. I now know the answer is yes. I hope this helps. I know when I felt that way I would have loved to hear this feedback from someone…instead all I ever heard was how AWESOME being pregnant is from my peers. In my experience the only thing that was awesome about it was the baby that was born at the end. Hang in there girl!
It is hard to be happy and joyous when you feel terrible. I had to take a depression screening as part of a routine pregnancy class through my health provider and they were concerned that I answered yes to the question Do you not enjoy things like you used to? Well of course I don’t! I feel achey and nauseated and tired all the time! I think I’ll like this whole mom thing better when me and the baby have our own bodies. In the meantime I just remind myself that growing a baby (or two in my case) is hard work for the body and lots of work for the baby too. We’ll muddle through, and it’ll be worth the discomfort. I’ll also give thanks every day that my husband is so kind and understanding, cuz’ I whine and complain all the time.
I feel the same way! I don’t know if I can do a whole 9 months! I am only 10 weeks, not out of the first trimester, but something tells me this is going to last longer.
I am always sick to my stomach. I have tried ever possible home remedy. I just a vomiting mess 
chococherry
i’m totally miserable. i’m 28 weeks along and i feel as if i could pop any minuite.. i keep wondering if this is ever going to end, i’m depressed, sick, angry, confused,cant sleep, cant get comfortable, etc… i could go on forever! i just hope that everything will be alright and i hope i have a healthy good baby!
thanks for listining and good luck to all the rest of ya’s!
Hello im 9 weeks pregant with my 5th kid.. I have never felt so miserable.. What can I do.. I cant function because im sick and cant eat…
This is my second pregnancy and its been miserable from the begining my first time was so easy fun loved it. this one its to much ywo times is enough for me………………
i am 11 weeks amd miserable….lost interest in everything..this is my third pregnancy… as it is i have enough issues with $ and no child support from my two girls i have now..iam with the man i am pregnant with tho still now for 8 years…he has tp pay child support for his lil boy from another woman… but got raped by his ex..paying almost half his pay each week..i am currently out of work, on unemployment, my car is broke, no $ to fix it, and he has to work 3 jobs just to make ends meet…i feel so helpless and just want to disappear at times… afraid there is not enough $ to take care of new baby on way cuz his lil boy is sooo expensive… not to mention, first trimester making me so tired and nauses…im at my witz end…