Pregnant And Worrying Loads? Clinical Psychologists Want You To Know This

When you’re pregnant, levels of worry can ramp up to never-before-seen levels.

Much of those nine months can be spent worrying obsessively about miscarriage, whether you’re eating or doing the right things to keep your baby healthy, whether your baby is moving enough, and the impending birth.

It’s a lot. So it’s perhaps no surprise then that one in 10 women will struggle with pregnancy anxiety, which can begin to rule their lives.

It’s the subject of Break Free From Maternal Anxiety, a new book penned by three NHS clinical psychologists: Dr Fiona Challacombe, Dr Catherine Green and Dr Victoria Bream.

The trio use cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) techniques to explore how women can cope with persistent and distressing worries about pregnancy and becoming a mother. Here are some of the things we learned from it.

If you’re pregnant and feeling anxious, know you’re not alone.

From worries about whether your baby is moving enough to how you’ll cope with the birth (and all of the uncertainty that surrounds that), pretty much every mum-to-be on the planet will experience anxious thoughts at some point.

“They aren’t pleasant or comfortable and they certainly aren’t spoken about enough,” write the authors, “but they are a near universal part of pregnancy and parenthood.”

In fact, research has shown that 100% of new mothers experience intrusive, unwanted thoughts about something bad happening to their newborn in the first weeks after birth.

If you have the odd worry here and there, you probably don’t need to read a book on pregnancy anxiety. But if worries seem to crop up daily and they’re stopping you from doing things, read on.