Pregnancy Effects: Before, During & After | Stages & Changes

Therapist Marie-Claude Hamel Discusses Navigating The Perinatal Period For Women: The Effects Before, After and During Pregnancy

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESS Newswire / December 8, 2025 / When we think about preparing for a baby, most of us picture nursery colors, prenatal vitamins, and birth plans. But what about preparing for the psychological effects that pregnancy and new motherhood represent? Marie-Claude Hamelwho specializes in perinatal mental health and integrates psychodynamic therapy with trauma-informed practices like EMDR, has observed a troubling pattern: women are walking into one of life’s most transformative experiences emotionally unprepared for what’s coming. Not because they’re inadequate, but because society has failed to prepare them.

“We hand women pregnancy books and tell them which foods to avoid, but we rarely prepare them for the identity shifts or the anxiety spirals that can accompany becoming a mother.”

Before the Positive Test: Mental Health Starts Earlier Than You Think

Most discussions about maternal mental health begin at conception. Marie-Claude Hamel believes this is a critical mistake.

The Invisible Pressure of Pre-Conception

The decision to have a child, or the attempt to conceive, carries psychological weight that often goes unacknowledged. Women today face an unprecedented convergence of pressures: optimize your health, time it perfectly with your career, ensure your relationship is stable, achieve financial security, and oh, don’t wait too long because your fertility window is closing.

This pressure creates what Marie-Claude Hamel calls “pre-conception anxiety”, a state of chronic stress that can establish unhealthy mental patterns before pregnancy even begins. Women who experience fertility challenges may develop anxiety disorders that persist even after successful conception, coloring their entire pregnancy experience with fear rather than joy.

Knowing Your Psychological Starting Point

Marie-Claude Hamel advocates strongly for women to conduct what she terms a “mental health inventory” before trying to conceive. This isn’t about achieving perfect mental health, that’s neither possible nor necessary. It’s about understanding your emotional baseline so you can anticipate how pregnancy’s hormonal and psychological changes might affect you.

Do you have a history of depression that tends to emerge during times of significant life change? Have you experienced trauma that might be triggered by the physical sensations of pregnancy or the vulnerability of caring for an infant? These aren’t reasons to avoid pregnancy, but they are reasons to build support systems proactively.

“Mental health conditions don’t disqualify you from motherhood,” Marie-Claude emphasizes, “but pretending they won’t be affected by pregnancy leaves you vulnerable to preventable crises.”

Building Your Foundation

The pre-conception period is the ideal time to establish therapeutic relationships, strengthen your support network, and develop coping strategies. Waiting until you’re in the throes of pregnancy or postpartum depression to seek help means you’re building the plane while trying to fly it.

Marie-Claude Hamel encourages couples to have honest conversations about their expectations, fears, and support plans before conception. These discussions aren’t romantic, but they’re essential. How will household responsibilities shift? What does each partner need to feel supported? What will you do if mental health challenges arise?

During Pregnancy: More Than Morning Sickness and Cravings

Pregnancy is marketed as a time of glowing skin and baby kicks, with some unfortunate nausea thrown in. This narrative obscures the profound neurochemical and psychological transformation occurring in a pregnant woman’s brain.

The Hormonal Reality

The same hormones driving many physical pregnancy changes are also influencing your brain. Shifts in progesterone and estrogen don’t just affect your body-these hormones play a major role in mood regulation, stress responses, and emotional processing.

Marie-Claude Hamel sees many women who feel betrayed by their emotions during pregnancy. They expected happiness and anticipation but instead experienced waves of anxiety, unexpected sadness, or emotional volatility that feels foreign and frightening.

“Women often describe feeling unlike themselves when, in reality, they’re having a completely normal response to dramatic neurochemical changes.”

The Shadow Side of Anticipation

Something that is rarely discussed is that you can feel genuine joy about your coming baby while also feeling a sense of loss around your shifting autonomy. You can look forward to motherhood while missing parts of your pre-parent identity. These mixed emotions aren’t signs of ambivalence about your child-they’re signs that you’re processing a major life transition honestly.

Marie-Claude Hamel’s psychodynamic approach helps women understand how their own childhood experiences influence their pregnancy emotions. Your relationship with your mother, your family dynamics, your own upbringing, all of this becomes psychologically active during pregnancy as you subconsciously process what kind of mother you want to be.

Anxiety as Messenger, Not Enemy

Rather than viewing pregnancy anxiety as something to eliminate, Marie-Claude Hamel encourages women to listen to what it’s communicating. Worries about childbirth may signal a need for more education or support planning. Fears about parenting abilities might indicate a need to address perfectionist tendencies. Concerns about relationship changes could prompt important conversations with your partner.

“Anxiety isn’t always pathological,” Marie-Claude explains. “Sometimes it’s your psyche’s way of flagging issues that need attention.”

This reframe reduces the secondary suffering that comes from judging yourself for having concerns. Instead of thinking “I should be happy, why am I anxious?”, you can think “What is this anxiety trying to tell me, and how can I address it constructively?”

The Support You Actually Need

Marie-Claude Hamel is direct about what pregnant women need: not reassurance that everything will be fine, but acknowledgment that pregnancy is psychologically complex and permission to feel the full range of emotions it brings.

This might mean continuing or beginning therapy during pregnancy, joining support groups where honest conversations happen, or simply finding one person who won’t respond to your concerns dismissive optimism.

After Birth: The Overlooked Mental Health Crisis

If pregnancy’s psychological aspects are under-discussed, the postpartum period’s mental health challenges are catastrophically misunderstood. Society’s focus on the baby often renders the mother’s internal experience invisible until it reaches crisis levels.

The Biochemical Crash

Within hours of giving birth, a woman’s body experiences one of the most dramatic hormonal shifts possible. The hormones that sustained pregnancy plummet while prolactin surges. This isn’t a gentle transition, it’s a biochemical crash occurring simultaneously with physical recovery from birth and the demands of caring for a newborn.

Marie-Claude describes this as “being asked to perform at your best while you’re still recovering from a major operation.” The expectations placed on new mothers are wildly inconsistent with their neurochemical and physical reality.

Marie-Claude says it feels like being asked to perform at your best while you’re still recovering from a major operation

Baby Blues or Something More Serious?

The majority of new mothers, up to 80%, experience what’s termed “baby blues”: mood swings, tearfulness, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed. These typically resolve within two weeks as hormones stabilize.

Postpartum depression is different. It’s characterized by persistent depression, inability to feel pleasure, severe anxiety or panic, intrusive thoughts, and in extreme cases, thoughts of self-harm or harming the baby. Unlike the baby blues, postpartum depression is more serious and often requires professional care to fully address.

The problem is that many women, and their families, can’t distinguish between normal postpartum adjustment and clinical depression. Or worse, they assume all postpartum suffering is normal and should be endured silently.

“We’ve normalized maternal suffering to a dangerous degree,” Marie-Claude states firmly. “Women are told to tough it out when they’re actually experiencing treatable mental health conditions.”

Trauma-Informed Postpartum Care

Marie Claude Hamel‘s integration of EMDR and trauma-informed approaches is particularly relevant postpartum. Birth itself can be traumatic, even when everything goes “medically well.” Women may experience birth trauma from feeling powerless during labor, having emergency interventions, or experiencing physical complications.

This trauma doesn’t simply disappear once the baby is healthy. It can manifest as postpartum anxiety, difficulty bonding, or even post-traumatic stress disorder. Processing birth experiences, particularly traumatic ones, is essential for postpartum mental health.

The Maternal Instinct Myth

One of the most damaging narratives surrounding new motherhood is the idea that maternal instinct alone will guide you through. This myth can make it harder for women to recognize when they need support and to feel comfortable asking for it

“Parenting is a skill that many people grow into,” Marie-Claude explains. “When we pretend it’s effortless for everyone, we make new mothers feel inadequate instead of simply new to the role.”

The learning curve of early parenthood, combined with sleep deprivation, physical recovery, and hormonal fluctuation, creates enormous psychological strain. Acknowledging this doesn’t make you a bad mother; it makes you a realistic one.

The Relationship Reality

Becoming parents doesn’t just change individuals, it transforms relationships. Marie Claude’s background in couples therapy informs her understanding of how the perinatal period can either strengthen partnerships or expose fault lines.

The relationship dynamic that worked pre-children rarely translates seamlessly to parenthood. Couples must renegotiate everything: how they communicate, how they divide labor, how they maintain intimacy, how they support each other through stress.

“Couples who successfully navigate this transition are those who communicate honestly about their changing needs rather than expecting their relationship to remain unchanged,” Marie-Claude observes.

This requires difficult conversations about disappointments, unmet expectations, and resentments before they calcify into relationship-destroying patterns.

Practical Support That Actually Helps

Marie-Claude Hamel is pragmatic about what new mothers need. Traditional self-care advice, take a bubble bath, go for a walk, practice yoga, often feels out of reach for women with newborns.

Instead, she advocates for what she calls “micro-interventions”: two-minute mindfulness practices, text-based connections with other mothers, accepting help with laundry or meals without guilt. Self-care during the postpartum period looks radically different than it did before, and that’s okay.

She also emphasizes the importance of community. Isolation is one of the greatest risk factors for postpartum depression, yet new mothers often find themselves profoundly alone. Finding even one other mother to have honest conversations with can be protective.

Prevention, Not Just Crisis Response

Marie-Claude Hamel’s vision for perinatal mental health care moves away from waiting for women to reach crisis points before offering support. She advocates for normalizing mental health care throughout the perinatal period, not as a sign something is wrong, but as standard support for a major life transition.

This means routine mental health screening, accessible therapy options, and community support systems that don’t require women to be in crisis to access. It means partners, families, and healthcare providers asking “How are you feeling emotionally?” and creating space for honest answers.

The Ripple Effect

Supporting maternal mental health isn’t just about individual women, it’s about family systems and communities. Children of mothers who receive adequate mental health support during the perinatal period demonstrate better developmental outcomes. Families experience less long-term psychological distress. The investment in maternal mental health pays dividends across generations.

Your Mental Health Matters

If you’re planning pregnancy, currently pregnant, or in the postpartum period, consider this your permission slip to prioritize your mental health. Not as a luxury, but as a necessity.

Seeking support from a therapist who specializes in perinatal mental health isn’t an admission of failure, it’s an acknowledgment that you’re navigating one of life’s most significant transitions and deserve expert guidance.

Marie-Claude Hamel’s practice embodies this approach. By integrating psychodynamic therapy with trauma-informed techniques and specializing in the unique challenges of the perinatal period, she offers women the comprehensive support this transition demands.

The journey to motherhood is profound, complex, and deserving of far more psychological preparation and support than society currently provides. By acknowledging this reality and seeking appropriate help, you’re not just caring for yourself, you’re modeling healthy mental health practices for your children and investing in your family’s long-term wellbeing.

Your mental health during this transformative period isn’t separate from your ability to parent well, it’s fundamental to it. You deserve support, understanding, and professional care as you navigate this journey. The question isn’t whether challenges will arise, but whether you’ll have the resources and support to meet them with resilience and confidence.

To learn more visit:

Contact Marie-Claude Hame: hameltherapy@gmail.com

SOURCE: Marie-Claude Hamel

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