Difficult or complicated reactions to pregnancy
If your partner is pregnant, you might feel stress, worry, pressure, frustration or confusion.
This can happen for several reasons. For example, you could be juggling preparations for your baby’s arrival, money, work demands and more. Or you might feel unprepared for caring for a newborn. It’s also natural to feel worried about losing time for yourself and your partner.
Pregnancy can lead to stronger emotions too. These might include fear, anger, anxiety and depression. You could be experiencing these emotions for the first time. Or things that usually don’t upset you now do – for example, pressure at work.
Feelings like frustration and anger are common. What matters is how you respond to these feelings.
How to manage anger when your partner is pregnant: steps
Everybody feels frustrated or angry sometimes. But part of being a supportive and loving partner and parent is learning to manage your anger in ways that don’t hurt your family.
These steps can help.
1. Notice your anger early
It’s important to learn how to recognise early signs of anger, like fast heart rate or breathing, sweating, feelings of tension, clenching jaw and hands, and negative thoughts. When you can recognise these signs, it’s easier for you to stop your anger before it gets out of control.
2. Try to calm down
- Leave the situation so that you can keep yourself and everyone else safe.
- Do things to calm down. For example, go for a walk or run, listen to music, take a warm shower, talk to a friend about how you’re feeling or write it down. You could also say to yourself, ‘Yelling or hitting things isn’t going to solve this problem’ or ‘I can work this out’.
- Look for signs that you’re calming down. These include your heart rate slowing down and your muscles and jaw relaxing.
3. Reflect on the situation
When you’re calm, it might help to think about what made you angry and how you could handle things differently next time. You might even do this the next day, so you have some distance on the situation.
You can ask yourself questions like these:
- ‘How important was the situation?’
- ‘What made me so angry about the situation?’
- ‘What did I have control over in the situation? What didn’t I have control over?’
- ‘How do I want to sort out this situation?’
- ‘Is there anything I need to do to sort out the situation, or can I let it go?’
What to do when you don’t manage anger well
There’ll be times when you don’t manage anger well and you yell or say things you regret.
When this happens, it’s a good idea to take a moment to work out what to say to your child or your partner. Here are ideas:
- ‘I’m sorry I yelled. Can we talk about what happened?’
- ‘I’m sorry for losing my temper. Next time I’ll take myself away to calm down.’
- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, even though I was angry. I should have walked away and calmed down before we talked about it.’
It’s OK to feel angry, but it’s not OK to yell or hurt someone. So it’s best to say sorry for yelling or losing your temper.
When anger becomes violence during your partner’s pregnancy
For some people, strong reactions during pregnancy, like anger, can lead to violence.
There are many types of family violence, including:
- verbal violence – for example, shouting or saying hurtful things
- emotional violence – for example, controlling who your partner sees, where your partner goes, or what your partner does
- physical violence – for example, hurting or harming your partner.
Pregnancy can be a time when you behave violently for the first time in your relationship. Or if it has happened before, it might increase during pregnancy.
Violence is never OK. It can harm your unborn baby, your partner and you.
Getting help with anger and violence when your partner is pregnant
If you’ve been having trouble managing anger or your anger is leading to violence, professional help is the best thing for your partner, your unborn baby and you:
- Speak to your GP or another health professional.
- Call Lifeline on 131 114 or use their text or webchat service.
- Call the National Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service on 1800 737 732 or use their webchat service.
- Call MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978 or use their webchat service.
- Call No to Violence – Men’s referral service on 1300 766 491.
- Call a parenting helpline.
If you get help managing your anger, you might find good things coming back into your life. For example, being able to express yourself calmly might rebuild trust in your relationships with your partner and other important people in your life.
Effects of violence during pregnancy
Violence during pregnancy can cause miscarriage and a higher risk of premature birth and neonatal death.
Violence can also cause a pregnant partner’s stress hormones to rise. These stress hormones go through the placenta to the growing baby. They can have a negative effect on the baby’s development.
And violence can make a pregnant partner feel very anxious. Anxiety can have negative effects on the baby too, including on their mental health later in life.
Many Australian states have laws that protect unborn babies. These laws allow state child protection departments to take out intervention orders against people who are violent and prevent them from having contact with their pregnant partners. This includes not being allowed to go to the birth and being allowed only limited and supervised contact with their children.
Shaking, hitting, kicking or throwing a baby can lead to death, disability or serious injury. After birth, if you ever feel that you might hurt your baby or you have hurt your baby, you and your baby need immediate help. If your baby needs medical assistance, call an ambulance on 000.