When I was pregnant with my first child (1,5 year ago), I had a lot of symptoms like fatigue and nausea until I was 8 months along. I’ve struggled massively with my feelings of tiredness. Especially in relation to my ‘responsibilities’ at work, at my voluntary work, at home (mostly housekeeping), and social activities. I really had the feeling (now I know it were my thoughts, at least partially) that I was out of control and could not show up the way I wanted to even though I was pregnant. Also, I was very emotional and could cry very fast.
My question is, to what extent could this be attributable to the hormones and to what extent to my thoughts? Because at the time, I was also doing the self coaching and even though I did my thought work and ran models and actively did not resist the feelings/dread anymore, I still was not able to feel good in the situation (for at least 50%). Of course I knew that the ‘situation’ was something I could not control and taking good care of myself was something within my control. After temporary quitting almost everything except for work, sleeping and occasionally engaging in social contact, I still wasn’t feeling ‘good’ at least 50% of the time. Sidenote: the baby was determined ‘small’ by the gynecologist and I had additional check-ups and measurements every other week in the hospital. At first, I thought of it as necessary, good, lovely to see the baby quite often by ultrasound etc, but soon enough thought/felt of as afraid of receiving ‘bad’ news regarding the growth, exhausting to put into my work schedule, anxiety because the measurements were not ‘really good’ (no extra growth spurt), and nobody could tell me what it all really meant for the baby except for that we would find it out after labour. In these ‘circumstances’ of the baby’s growth together with the pregnancy symptoms, I felt completely out of control because I could not do anything about it (according to the doctors) and I really did not want to work less (32 hours a week). At one point I decided to work on my thoughts and that helped quite well, but still I was feeling so tired and emotional most of the time, even though I really was not resisting or fighting it anymore.
Altogether, my question is in what proportion could I ‘blame’ the hormones for feeling so anxious/sad etc, and to what extent my own thinking causing emotions? Everyone I have talked about it says that the hormones were (completely) to blame, but these people do not have the wonderful model to help them; and also, blaming the hormones would make me powerless and that is not how I wanted to feel. Furthermore, how could I approach it differently in the future (if I wanted and could get pregnant again and these circumstances also would occur)?