Everyone desires to have a child someday and being pregnant is the only way to bring this desire to reality. However, this 38-weeks journey for every woman is ensconced with a lot of new feelings and cares, and proneness to anxiety, fatigue, and overall stress is one of these new experiences for the baby carrying mother.
Practically, a pregnant woman becomes more weighty (especially as the pregnancy approach term), has multiple ante-natal appointments, takes care of her domestic home chores, feels the bumps of her unborn child, worry about medical reports, thinks about the delivery week and date, cares about the baby needs and their financial requirements—and fear, and worry all the time. All of these and many other issues make stress a bigger problem for her. Besides, human cortisol, which is a natural stress managing hormone, has been shown to have adverse effects on a fetus (unborn child) when present in elevated amounts. Therefore, it can’t be relied upon to give her relief for her stress, and it is the major constituents of most stress managing drugs.
So, if you are pregnant or expecting to be someday, you need to learn other natural ways to manage stress during your pregnancy, and this post will reveal five natural ways you could use to manage stress during pregnancy–
In This Article
1. Meditate
Stress causing factors such as anxiety affects your respiratory pattern naturally. It increases your breathing rate and causes you to take a shallower and shorter breath. This significantly reduces your blood oxygen tension which triggers the stress centers of the brain and increases cortisol secretion which you want to avoid.
Meditation is one of the most effective natural way o manage your stress levels as a pregnant woman and with a swollen foot and growing belly you need to learn how to do this irrespective of your meditation experience effectively.
To meditate during pregnancy, you need to:
- Find a Suitable Place—that is devoid of noise, distraction, and air pollutant. It should be spacious and give you a balanced, upright sitting position. So, you may need a ground mat for this.
- Focus on your baby and belly—Keep your thoughts free from everything but your unborn child.
- Take a deep breath repeatedly and observe the movements of your abdomen.
- Speak out positive words mildly—something likes, “all is well…I’m going to be alright.”
You could do this often and sometimes in any place especially when you noticed that you have fast-paced breaths in a worrying situation.
2. Get Some Intermittent Rest
Being pregnant is enough work! Still yet, you still have some domestic work or office duties before your official maternity leave to handle. So, catching the bus or train, driving to see the Doctor, walking from store to store shopping for your baby’s needs amongst others are activities leaves you exhausted and prone to negative emotions. All of these are stress triggers.
An effective ways of managing your everyday stress as a pregnant woman is taking intermittent rest in between activities and sleeping well at night. You could just lie down and take a quick-nap after washing the dishes before using the laundry machine and so on. Also, sleep on your bed not on the sofa for proper positioning and always sleep on your side for the health benefit of your child.
3. Eat Healthy Balanced Diet
During pregnancy, you are responsible for feeding yourself and your child. This doesn’t translate into taking a double portion of your typical meal; rather the emphasis is laid on careful selection of your meals to attain second quality.
Simply put, you need a balanced and healthy diet—foods that will both nourish you and your child equally and help you manage your stress levels. We recommend that you go low on sugars, salt, and caffeine. And begin to get more on whole grains like wheat, brown rice, and barley, green leafy vegetables like spinach and broccoli. Plant proteins such as pulse and legumes including animal proteins like eggs, chicken and selective kinds of seafood such Salmon and Tuna; fruits that are rich in anti-oxidants and vitamin C such as oranges; astringent foods that help your body absorb water such as grapes and bananas; and never forget to take plenty of water each day.
4. Take Mild Exercise Regularly
Exercise naturally takes your mind of negativities and keeps you refreshed and rejuvenated. During pregnancy, exercise relieves both emotional and physical stress by increasing your pulse rate, hasten digestion and keep you stretched because it triggers the release of relaxation endorphins. However, during pregnancy playing basketball or soccer isn’t a good idea. So you need mild exercise options like body stretches and workout especially during the early and late hours of the day, and this should be monitored where possible. Taking a walk down a few meters will also help greatly.
Still yet, swimming is an excellent option for you during pregnancy, especially at the first trimester. It keeps you light in water and allows you to make necessary low-impact body and joint stretches that add to your fun, comfort, and relaxation during pregnancy.
5. See, Hear and Speak Positively
One primary source of stress during pregnancy is negative thoughts! Pregnancy doesn’t make you dumb, deaf or blind. You will eventually read dallies, hear stories, watch movies and TV programs and sometimes receive awkward medical reports. Other times, you may remember negative past experiences you had, or your relatives had with their pregnancies.
Imagining what comes first to your mind first if you walk into the hospital and hear that a woman just put to bed and passed on?
Therefore, to avoid the stress, these could bring, you need to discipline your mind and fill it with positive and motivational thoughts! Get your favorite mantras; watch success videos, read great pregnancy stories like the Duchess of Sussex pregnancy and baby-boy birth. This would help you wade off these stress triggers and keep you and your baby healthy.
In conclusion, stress can be managed naturally during pregnancy, and we have given you five tested and effective ways of during this following intense research. However, it is essential you talk these through with your Doctor to ensure that you don’t compromise your medical status in any of this. Also, quickly identify your stress triggers, talk to those around you about them and ultimately avoid them and you will be fine. We wish you a fascinating pregnancy experience and safe delivery.
