Disturbing feelings during pregnancy

The main thing I have learned in psychotherapy is that wrong or forbidden feelings do not exist. You are allowed to feel whatever you feel. Even when you are pregnant. You can feel so angry at someone that sometimes you want to hurt or to kill him or her and you can even have fantasies about doing it. It is completely normal if you do not do it in reality. It is completely normal to have such feeling for... your baby. It may sound very harsh, but it is the reality. The world is not just black or white. It is mainly grey. We can love and be angry at someone at the same time. I can be very angry at my baby when I feel nauseous all the time for days. At the same time I can love my baby to the moon and back. I know that some women can condemn me for my words. But I am not a bad person. I just have the courage to talk about difficult things. Most pregnant women do not allow themselves to have ambivalent feelings or they block them unconciously. Sometimes such moral filters we have can result in depression or can cause various psychosomatic symptoms. For example, for me vomiting during pregnancy stopped as soon as I stopped trying to be happy about my pregnancy and said loudly that sometimes I was so exhausted I wanted the pregnancy to disappear. 

How morning sickness is related to depression?

Morning sickness is a common pregnancy sign. But sometimes it is more than just hormones and body's reaction to pregnancy. Sometimes you can be sick and vomit because of ... emotions! It did happen to me.

I started experiencing morning sickness when I was just 5 weeks pregnant. In a few days my morning sickness became severe vomiting which continued all day long. I believe at first it was just a common pregnancy sickness, but after I had to be hospitalized because of dehydration when I was 13 weeks pregnant, I started questioning myself. Why was I still vomiting at the time pregnancy sickness usually starts fading? And my pregnancy sickness was really extreme. The strangest thing was that I was throwing up mainly after drinking fluids, but rarely after eating solid food. Usually during pregnancy morning sickness women do not throw up after drinking water, but they do after eating something body rejects. So doctors became suspicious if I am really experiencing usual morning sickness or if I have psychosomatic symptoms.

For me the turning point was the moment when I started throwing up in a hospital when my roommate went to labor. She was only 34 weeks pregnant and it was frightening for me to watch her starting giving birth so early.

Then I finally understood I was not experiencing morning sickness, but I was vomiting out my emotions. My psychotherapist explained to me how it happens. If we unconsciously stop ourselves from experiencing some negative emotions, our body might start acting out. In my case, I was depressed and stressed and I had mixed feelings about my pregnancy. But I was trying to suppress all the negative emotions and not to feel fear, sadness and anger. I was trying to be a super pregnant woman we see in mass media every day. In our society it is believed that pregnant woman should be anything but happy and glowing, when in fact a person could experience a wide range of emotions.  

I remember the day vomiting stopped. It took me one hour with a good therapist for extreme morning sickness to pass. For the first time I told anyone that I was so tired of feeling constantly sick, of crying and of suffering, that most of the time I just wanted not to be pregnant. I admitted that I dreamed of turning back the time and of never becoming pregnant. I even confessed to my therapist that pregnancy is so hard for me that sometimes I secretly think of termination of pregnancy. It was a very intense session. I cried. I shouted. And surprisingly the sickness I was feeling for weeks started fading away. 

Of course one session of therapy did not solve all my problems. I still felt sick for some time but I stopped throwing up every day. As I continued psychotherapy, vomiting finally stopped. 

I never thought that our emotions can affect our bodies so much before it happened to me. I believe I am not the only pregnant woman with such an extreme body reactions to suppressed feelings. If you have experienced any psychosomatic symptoms during pregnancy, please, share with me by commenting this blog entry. I believe it is very important in our situation to find understanding and support.