Tips for stress management during early pregnancy?
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at
7:17 am
I’m currently under huge stress for many reasons, I’m foreigner living in Japan and I’m afraid this could affect my child. In Japan people don’t do any counseling or anything.It’s just piling and piling.
Tagged with: during • Early • management • Pregnancy • stress • Tips
Filed under: Pregnancy Stress
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Im 7 weeks and i find that when i stressed i go for a walk myself or ly down for a while and try to read a book shut myself away from the rest of the world or get on the phone to a close friend and get a good chat.
Good luck with everything
Hi! Although some research shows that although moderate stress does not necessarily “harm” your baby, stress during pregnancy has been shown to negative effects, especially on the timing of delivery of your baby, and on how well the baby grows and develops. Some examples of the research in this area are findings that stress correlated with premature labor and delivery, low birthweight, increased incidence of pregnancy complications, and also, children of stressed pregnancies have more illness, behavioral and developmental delays.
Having said that, our bodies are designed to manage stress pretty well, so some stress is fine, even during pregnancy. When it’s ongoing, however, or happens a lot, as you are describing, that is when problems can become more of a worry. The best things you can do to relieve some of that stress are to find some support to help you deal with your issues at work. From what you’ve said, this probably needs to be more than just friends to talk to; you probably want to speak to a counselor, priest, life coach, or even to your doctor (who you are seeing for the baby). One option is to use online counseling (check out asktheinternettherapist.com). Find someone you trust who can be objective and help you think through this really hard time.
Of course, it’s impossible to completely eliminate stress completely from your life, but you can make decisions that control your stress level and help you control the effects of stress on your health. At the core of stress management are things like following a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, and making time for uninterrupted relaxation, even if it’s just a few minutes a day. Antoher thing that be a big help, if just saying no to anything you do not have to do to make more time for relaxation and to take the pressure off. If you have to, tell people it”s ahealth issue and you have to say no.
Happily, research has shown that people, pregnant or not, even those living stressful lives, can avoid many of the negative effects of stress when they implement and stick to stress-management techniques. So, the good news is that with a little planning and some support, stress does not have to create problems for your health- you can anticipate stress, build in support, and take care of your mind and body, even in a stressful world!
Hang in there, and take care!
Mary