Pregnancy can be stressful! Most pregnancy’s start with an OMG I’m pregnant!! Woohooo!!!! Followed closely by OMG I’m pregnant!! Farrrrrkkkkk!!!! And this cycle generally continues for the next 9 months. It sometimes continues till they leave home, but that’s a different story for a different post!
Unfortunately, there is no magic cure I know of for the rollercoaster emotional ride of pregnancy, but there is for its side effects.
Stress of any kind increases cortisol levels, and too much cortisol is bad, it’s bad for us and it’s bad for the unborn baby. It can increase anxiety and depression in mums and can lead to premature babies and excessive foetal activity.
Now not every pregnant woman is in a stressful job/situation or stressed about pregnancy but if they are decreasing stress can be of great benefit to them and the baby.
So how to decrease it? Obviously, as one of the original pregnancy massage specialists, I’m going to recommend massage and I’ve handily added a link to a few research articles proving its effectiveness. A massage every couple of weeks is proven to be incredibly beneficial and I’ll be expanding on this in future posts. But massage isn’t for everyone so I’ve included a link from Lifehacker on some other very effective de-stressing techniques.
So the take-home message is if you’re pregnant or know someone who is pregnant make sure they are taking some time out to de-stress and chill out, it’s important for both mum and bub!
You can read more on our pregnancy massage page, as well as this research on the effectiveness of massage in pregnancy and relaxation techniques