Emotional Changes During Pregnancy: Becoming a Mother

There is no shortage of information about pregnancy. You can find out what size fruit your baby is this week, track every symptom, read about every milestone, research every stroller, compare car seats and build a registry before you have fully wrapped your head around the fact that there is, in fact, a baby coming.

What we talk about much less is what pregnancy does to you. Not your body, there is plenty written about that, but your sense of self. Somewhere between seeing those two lines and meeting your baby, something begins to shift. You start thinking differently about your future, your relationships, your work, your childhood and the person you are becoming.

You can be thrilled to be pregnant and still have a moment when the enormity of it lands. Maybe it happens when you are awake at three in the morning, or when you are making plans for next year and suddenly realize you have no idea what your life will look like then. You knew things were going to change, of course. But knowing something intellectually and actually beginning to feel it are very different things.

You can want this deeply and still miss your old life

This can be one of the harder parts of pregnancy to admit. Especially if you waited a long time to become pregnant, experienced loss, or have people around you constantly reminding you how exciting this all is.

It can be exciting. It can also be unsettling.

You might miss spontaneity. You might miss your old body, your old energy, or the rhythm you and your partner had before everything started revolving around appointments, due dates and what comes next. You might find yourself missing the version of you who could book a trip, take on a big project, stay out late, or make a decision without first considering how it would affect someone else.

None of that means you want your baby any less.

It simply means you understand that becoming a mother is a major life transition.

There is actually a word for this: matrescence. Much like adolescence describes the transition from childhood into adulthood, matrescence describes the physical, emotional and psychological process of becoming a mother. And once you know the word, a lot of what pregnancy can feel like starts to make more sense.

Motherhood does not suddenly begin the moment a baby is placed in your arms. In many ways, it has already started.

Suddenly, everybody has an opinion

Pregnancy also has a funny way of turning something incredibly personal into something surprisingly public.

People may start commenting on your body in ways they never would have before. You are carrying high. You are carrying low. You look small. You look huge. You must be having a boy. You definitely look like you are having a girl.

Then come the questions. Are you going to breastfeed? Are you having an epidural? Will you go back to work? Are you going to have another one? Have you picked a name?

And, usually, the advice follows close behind.

Some women love this part of pregnancy. There can be something lovely about how people suddenly want to share stories and connect with you. But there can also be moments when you wonder exactly when your body, your birth plan and your parenting decisions became open for public discussion.

It may be one of the first times motherhood asks you to decide whose voices matter to you, which advice you want to take in and when you are comfortable simply trusting yourself.

Your own childhood starts to look different

Pregnancy can also send you backwards at exactly the same time it is propelling you forwards.

You may start thinking about your own parents more. You might remember things from childhood that you have not thought about in years. You may suddenly understand certain things your mother did in a completely different way, or find yourself wanting to ask questions that never occurred to you before.

You may also start thinking about the things you want to carry forward and the things you want to do differently.

What did home feel like when you were little? Which traditions mattered? What do you want your own child to remember someday? What kind of home do you want to create?

Becoming someone’s mother has a way of making you look at what it meant to be someone’s daughter.

Sometimes that is beautiful. Sometimes it is complicated. For many women, it is probably a bit of both.

Your relationship starts changing before the baby arrives

One of the strange things about pregnancy is that two people can be having the same baby while experiencing the pregnancy very differently.

For one person, it is happening inside their body every minute of every day. The physical changes are impossible to ignore. Eventually, there is a tiny person kicking you from the inside.

For your partner, the whole thing can remain slightly more abstract for much longer. That does not mean they are less excited or less connected. It simply is not happening to them in quite the same way.

And then there are all the conversations that suddenly become real.

How will we divide nights? What happens when we go back to work? Who takes leave? How involved will our families be? What kind of parents do we want to be? What do we think about discipline, childcare, screen time, money, religion, routines?

You can discover that the person you have agreed with on almost everything has a completely different view about something you have never once discussed.

Pregnancy can bring couples incredibly close. It can also uncover assumptions you did not realize either of you had. That may be part of the transition too; learning how to become a family before the third person has even arrived.

Work may suddenly feel more complicated too

For women who care deeply about their careers, pregnancy can bring up another set of questions that are not always easy to talk about.

Will people see me differently now? Will I still want the same things professionally? Will I be able to work the way I used to? Will I want to?

And then there are the questions nobody can really answer until you are on the other side of it. What if you love maternity leave? What if you hate it? What if you desperately miss work? What if you do not want to go back at all?

There can still be an assumption that motherhood will automatically rearrange a woman’s ambitions into their proper order, as though there is one correct way to feel.

There isn’t.

Some women become mothers and feel even more connected to their careers. Others discover that things they cared deeply about before suddenly matter less. Many land somewhere in the middle, where both work and motherhood matter enormously, and the challenge becomes learning how to make room for both.

You do not have to solve that while you are pregnant. You do not need to predict exactly who you will be six months after your baby arrives.

You are allowed to meet that version of yourself when you get there.

Pregnancy involves a surprising amount of waiting

For something that can feel so busy, pregnancy also involves an incredible amount of waiting.

You wait for the first appointment. Then the heartbeat. Then test results. Then the ultrasound. Then movement. Then the next appointment. Eventually you wait for labour, wondering when exactly this person who has already changed so much about your life is finally going to arrive.

And somewhere inside all of that waiting, something remarkable happens: you begin developing a relationship with someone you have never actually met.

You imagine them. You wonder who they will look like. You talk about names. You picture holding them. You think about what kind of personality they might have, whether they will be quiet or funny or stubborn or curious.

At the same time, pregnancy comes with a kind of uncertainty that is difficult to describe until you live it. Even with all the tests and scans and appointments, there is still so much you cannot know.

That can make pregnancy feel magical one day and frightening the next.

Sometimes both in the same hour.

You may not feel like yourself for a while

Pregnancy can also create a strange sense of disorientation.

Your body changes, your energy changes and sometimes your emotions seem to have ideas of their own. Things that used to be easy might suddenly take more effort. Your capacity for work, exercise, socializing or simply getting through the day can shift in ways you did not expect.

At the same time, much of the attention starts moving toward the baby.

People ask how the baby is doing. How big is the baby now? Is the baby moving? Have you chosen a name? Do you know the sex?

Far fewer people stop to ask how you are doing with all of this. Not physically. You. The woman whose entire life is about to change.

And perhaps one of the more surprising parts of pregnancy is occasionally feeling caught somewhere between the person you have always been and the person everyone seems to assume you are about to become.

You do not have to love every minute of it

Pregnancy is often presented through a fairly beautiful filter. The bump. The photographs. The tiny clothes. The nursery. The excitement.

And sometimes it really is beautiful.

It can also be exhausting, uncomfortable, frightening, boring, lonely and, especially near the end, unbelievably long.

You do not have to pretend otherwise.

You can hate being pregnant and love your baby. You can feel incredibly grateful and still complain about heartburn. You can be excited and frightened at exactly the same time.

You do not have to feel radiant every day, and you do not have to perform gratitude for anyone else.

Pregnancy is not a test of how cheerfully you can tolerate discomfort.

It is simply something you are experiencing.

And you may not feel like a mother yet

Some women feel connected to their baby almost immediately. Others do not.

Some talk to their belly from the beginning. Others feel slightly ridiculous doing it. Some feel profoundly maternal while they are pregnant; for others, the whole thing remains a little surreal until there is actually a baby in their arms.

None of this predicts what kind of mother you will be.

We hear a lot about maternal instinct, as though pregnancy activates some hidden knowledge and suddenly you are supposed to know what to do. Most women do not.

There will be things you do not know. Decisions you second-guess. Moments when you wonder whether you are ready.

That is probably because you are about to meet an entirely new person.

You are not supposed to know everything about them yet.

You will learn each other.

There is someone else you are about to meet too

So much of pregnancy is spent wondering about the baby. Who will they be? What will they look like? What will their personality be? Will they sleep? Will they be funny? Quiet? Curious? Wild?

But there is another person waiting on the other side of pregnancy too.

You.

Not an entirely different woman. Not someone whose ambitions, humour, friendships, interests and individuality suddenly disappear the moment she becomes a mother.

You, with another part of yourself added.

Motherhood does not have to erase the woman you were before it. It becomes part of her.

And perhaps pregnancy is the very beginning of learning how to hold both: the woman you have always been and the mother you are becoming.

There is room for both.

Motherhood, Reimagined.

No One Tells You That Becoming a Mother Starts Before the Baby Arrives