As much as you hate to admit it, you’ve ALWAYS been a worrier. You arrive to the airport four hours early just in case of delays, you double-check your tank is filled before going on a long car journey, and you NEVER leave the house without making sure the oven is turned off.

Some might call you paranoid, but in your opinion, you’re just being overly cautious.

However, now that you’re pregnant, you’ve run into a situation that you don’t feel fully in control of – how your first trimester plays out.

It’s perfectly normal to worry during your first trimester. After all, you would have been warned by the doctor that this is the period of your pregnancy where you’re most likely to miscarry – a distressing reality for any parent to contemplate.

Even if you find yourself worrying during this time, what’s important is how you manage your worry and balance the amount of control you have over the situation in your head. Remember, although miscarriages do happen, the odds are most likely in your favour for a healthy pregnancy.

Here are some tips to help you manage and balance your worry:

Know that most miscarriages are not caused by anything you did wrong or could have controlled. Although miscarriages do happen, it can be comforting to know that they are usually not caused by anything you did wrong, such as biological/genetic factors. Remember that embryos have become resilient over the thousands of years that humans have been around, and their development is mainly influenced by their genes.

If you do miscarry, it doesn’t mean your next pregnancy won’t be healthy. Just because you miscarry, try to remember that this doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with your reproductive organs or that you won’t have a healthy pregnancy next time. Always make sure to surround yourself with family and friends during this time, and let them know how losing this pregnancy has affected you.

Know that although being healthy and eating the right things is important during pregnancy, sometimes we cannot control what happens to our bodies. For example, although it may feel comforting to drink kale smoothies all day long, this doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t develop a medical issue related to pregnancy such as pre-eclampsia.

You shouldn’t hate yourself for past behaviours when you didn’t know you were pregnant. It’s common for women to over-analyse what they ate and drank during the early days of their pregnancy, when they didn’t even know they were pregnant. However, it’s important to remember – because most pregnancies are unplanned – that many pregnant women don’t start making conscious decisions about what to eat and drink until later on in the first trimester. Overall, this isn’t something you should worry about, as there isn’t one single behaviour that will determine the outcome of your entire pregnancy.

Always try to reframe your worries if they feel out of control. You can do this by writing down your worries and your feelings about them, assessing what you wrote, and reframing your worries by eliminating judgement. Finally, try to challenge yourself to frame your worry optimistically instead.

How do I manage my worry in the first trimester?