Getting pregnant and being pregnant is easier for some than others. If you are having trouble getting pregnant, it can cause a lot of stress, especially if you are undergoing IVF treatment in the process. In addition, being pregnant can also be difficult, which means that pregnancy is not always a celebration. Mindfulness can support pregnancy in several ways to reduce stress and increase the quality of your life at this important time.
In this article, I discuss how mindfulness can support pregnancy in a positive way.
You've found the perfect partner and now you want to get pregnant. This is not easy for everyone. Stress, for example, can make conception more difficult. If you then also undergo IVF treatment you might get extra stress because this is not the easiest treatment.
If you are struggling to conceive, you may also develop avoidance behaviors to avoid being reminded of your difficulty, as other pregnant women do not want to see. By using mindfulness, it is possible to deal with your emotions in a healthier way that also makes you grow as a person.
Chinese research on mindfulness in women undergoing IVF treatment found that mindfulness helps to reduce stress, have more self-compassion and better control your emotions. After six months, it was found that 45% of women who used mindfulness had become pregnant compared to 20% of women who had not used mindfulness. So the chances of becoming pregnant were increased by more than 2 times due to the effects of mindfulness!
Mindfulness to promote your child's development
Stress during pregnancy has a negative effect on your child's development. Anxiety and stress can cause your child's brain to not develop properly during pregnancy. Because mindfulness can reduce stress, the assumption arose among some scientists that mindfulness during pregnancy can promote fetal brain development.
Research(1) found that babies whose mothers had used mindfulness were more likely to treat a sound as normal and not new than babies whose mothers had not used mindfulness. This was examined by having 9-month-old babies hear a sound repeatedly and measure their brain waves. The babies whose mothers had used mindfulness had a less intense reaction to the sound more quickly than the babies whose mothers had not used mindfulness. This was an indication to the researchers that the sound was perceived as normal more quickly.
However, the researchers did indicate that this could also be because the mothers had used mindfulness while mothering in the first 9 months. So they indicated that more research needs to be conducted on this.
What has become clear is that learning to use mindfulness can have a positive effect on your child's development during or after pregnancy or even at both times.
Mindfulness to combat postpartum depression
Mindfulness is not only good for your child's development, but also for yourself. In fact, between 10 and 40 percent of pregnant women experience anxiety and stress during pregnancy due to the major change they are experiencing. Worries about the responsibilities of motherhood and the change in lifestyle can cause anxious feelings about the future.
These types of anxieties increase the risk of postpartum depression. A study involving 24 women who suffered from these types of pregnancy fears showed that mindfulness is a good way to reduce these fears.
By applying mindfulness in their daily lives , they were able to reduce their fears, worries and stress and also suffered less from depressive symptoms.
Participants indicated that the connectivity, self-compassion, insights and reduced reactivity components helped best for them to keep fears at bay.
Mindfulness to enjoy your pregnancy
Therefore, to ensure that you too can enjoy your pregnancy, I will provide a few exercises that have these components in them.
Mindfulness for connectivity
Connectivity is about the contact between body and mind. That connectivity also allows you to properly enjoy movements your baby is making in your belly.
One way to foster that connectivity is to perform a body scan. This is a mindfulness meditation where you very consciously go past your entire body on what you are feeling.
For the body scan, lie down in a comfortable position and first focus on breathing. Then you shift your attention to the points of your toe and look at how they feel, what they feel like and whether you should relax them or not. Then you move on to another part of your feet and eventually you gradually walk down your entire body.
Mindfulness for self-compassion
Self-compassion is a way to be kinder to yourself and take less of a toll on things that happen to you in life. Promoting self-compassion can be done by being aware of the emotion an event evokes in you and realizing that such things are part of life.
The way to improve self-compassion with mindfulness is to first acknowledge the situation for what it is. You first take a few deep breaths then name the event. "X happened to me." Then you name what moment this is "This is a moment of stress," then you have to acknowledge to yourself that this is part of life. Now comes perhaps the hardest part, for you have to be kind to yourself. You cannot actually say that you should not be stressed by this, therefore say "This is a moment of stress, this is a part of life, therefore I may be kind to myself, I have the strength to get over this." If you like, you can also put your hand on your heart in this process to cherish yourself and feel the warmth on your heart.
Mindfulness against reactivity
Pregnancy hormones can cause you to become absorbed in emotions; this is also known as reactivity. You experience the emotion and act accordingly. You insist on having something and you turn into a whining child. You find a commercial on television touching and there you are already in need of tissues. This emotional roller coaster can be very annoying and by using mindfulness to reduce that reactivity, the emotional roller coaster, becomes more like an emotional dream escape (That quiet attraction at the Efteling).
Especially under the influence of stress, reactivity becomes more likely. This is a kind of instinct reaction that does not always make sense, and for many women, pregnancy is a time of stress.
To reduce that reactivity, you actually need to take 3 steps:
- Create a space between the moment and your response
If something happens, don't react immediately. First, take a few deep breaths in and out. This pause allows you to think clearly and not react instinctively.
- Awareness of thoughts
The second step is to become aware of your emotions and thoughts about the moment. Observe with curiosity how your body feels, what that thought voice is saying to you and what emotions you are having. By observing this without reacting immediately, you create space to think of a response that is in your control instead of an impulsive reaction.
- Give a new framework to the situation
Reframing means looking at the situation from multiple perspectives. By looking at the situation from other sides, such as your partner's side or even an invisible third person's side, you can decide to react differently than you initially wanted, which has a better long-term effect.
It's not a big deal if this doesn't work right away. It is not for nothing that many mindfulness courses are offered, because practice makes perfect.
Want to learn more about improving the quality of your life by having more influence over your thoughts and reactions? Then come to a seminar or check out Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' trainings.
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