Very highly stressed, can anyone reassure me I haven't done harm to the baby?

[emeraldgirl1]

This morning I absolutely lost it with DH (he's usually great but not remotely pulling his weight on the house move we are doing in 3 weeks), screamed and yelled (I am not proud of this!!!) and got very very red-faced and with racing heart etc.

I have been pretty chilled (by my standards) most of the pregnancy but now the stress is piling up, I have no maternity leave as am self-employed and under deadline and we have a move to undertake.

I actually think I am coping with the deadline/moving stress pretty well on a day-to-day basis (I think dopamine has kicked in) but this morning I really did lose it after a bad night's sleep and DH being a total pain. I know the stress hormones are bad for the baby and I am just so worried now that I might have raised my cortisol/adrenalin/blood pressure levels this morning to a very unhealthy degree.

I am hoping a one-off shrieky incident (plus quite a few tears in the night) won't have done harm, but I would love to have any reassurance from anyone who knows more about this than I do.

You'll be fine.

& in any case - baby will do better if you shriek and yell to release tension - rather than bottling it up.

Nothing to worry about at all. As your pregnancy progresses you'll get more rages from time to time, it's hormones.

The kind of stress that would be damaging is long term constant stress- eg domestic abuse, living in a dangerous situations, working long hours in difficult conditions etc

The odd blow out now then is fine, probably quite therapeutic! Baby is pretty resilient- maybe treat yourself and baby to bit of nice chocolate to get some feel good hormones going

I wouldn't worry about it, as human beings we're designed to handle stress our, our body floods itself with different hormones depending on what state of mind we're in, however angry you were, it's nothing you and your baby can't deal with.

In addition, when you think of the continuous stress that mothers in war zones have, it makes the odd one off 'steam letting loose' session look like nothing!

Your baby will be fine :-)

Thank you so much, all the sane people out there!!

I do logically know (I think) that a one-off screamathon can't do any long-term harm, I think I just scared myself a bit with how breathless and purple-faced I got.

I do see that long-term stress would be much, much worse, though I am sure babies are very resilient and can manage even that!

I think I am hyper-aware of it because I know my own mother was super-stressed throughout all her pregnancies (she's a natural disaster-monger with high anxiety) and it certainly didn't help me one little bit. I have suffered anxiety all my life, though I am sure a huge amount of that is because of the way she brought me up rather than neccessarily any anxiety during pregnancy having a long-term effect. But I think I am dimly aware of some studies that show stress hormones are not good for in-utero baby.

I have really been surprised how calm I have been most of the time, I have never been less anxiety-prone in my life for a lot of the pregnancy, especially the 3rd trimester.

But this morning was not a good moment.

Feel a bit bad for DH now, he was being clueless rather than actually intentionally annoying, and I really gave it to him with both barrels and then some...

As others have said, please don't worry about it. And i am a big stress-head myself.DH and I have already had a couple of real humdingers and I'm only 10 weeks along. I suspect there'll be a few more to come too!

Thanks gingerbreadpixie - oddly, DH and I have managed to reduce our rowing over the past 7 months (though we were coming from a starting point of having a couple of rows a week - we are both very bickery people!!)

I have made a conscious effort to let things go during the pregnancy, not always achieved but I am trying! He really got on my wick last night though, I honestly think sometimes he has no idea how much there is to get done and on addition he is one of those annoying people who thinks everything is being 'rushed' if you try to take a decision in less than about 6 months.