Caring For Your Mental Health in Pregnancy

Today I want to talk about something that is usually kept ‘quiet’ during most women’s pregnancies, and that is prenatal depression. You’ve probably heard of post natal depression, which a shocking amount of women have cope with after birth, this is similar to that but prenatal depression is something you can have whilst your pregnant or perhaps whilst even trying to conceive.

It’s not unusual to feel low periods whilst you’re pregnant as your crazily changing hormones will send you from completely joyful to broken down in tears rolling around on the floor in a matter of minutes. But prenatal depression is on a complete different scale to that, something a lot more serious than feeling a little blue. That’s what I want to try shed light on in today’s post with the help of the Moment Health App. I’ve been tracking my own moods and feelings on the app throughout this last trimester and it has honestly helped me step back and analyse my emotions instead of letting them get out of control in my head.

I’ve been very lucky and haven’t suffered with prenatal depression this pregnancy. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve certainly had my low days but overall I’ve definitely been a very happy chubby-bunny, and it’s been lovely to see all my positive progress on the app.

With the Moment Health app you can track your moods and emotions whenever you fancy it. It will log each of your moods into ‘morning’, ‘noon’ and ‘night’ by percentage, and then show you the week overall. This will paint you a picture of how your weeks have been based on your moods. It’s very pleasing to see the results and high percentages especially if you’ve had a great week.

There is a wonderful section on the app called the ‘Checker’. You select whether you’re a expectant mum or a new mum, it then asks whether you’d like to be checked based on anxiety or on depression. Followed by that is a small selection of questions about how you’ve been feeling recently, and how often you’ve been feeling this way. This is a early-symptoms checker and is used to detect signs of both prenatal and post natal depression. Once it has assessed you it will give you advice following your answers on next steps. Like visiting your GP, or will suggest local services that are suitable for you to reach out to.

The community section connects you with other mums and parents via the Moment Health Facebook page and a closed community Facebook group so you can feel like you’re in a safe place to ask advice on everything pregnancy and parenthood related if you so wished. The Facebook page itself shares lots of useful links to articles alongside light-hearted parent related humor. It lets you know what big events are going on like the recent BBC #MumTakeOver. They openly talk about mental health in all stages of motherhood on these pages, making sure no one feels alone in such a scary life-changing stage of life.

The app is completely free and I highly recommend it to any parent or any pregnant woman out there. Even if you think you’re coping utterly fine just like I have been. It’s such a positive thing to do for your mental well-being whilst you go through this insanely huge change as you progress from woman to mother.

This is the companion you need to help keep your mental health in check from the start of pregnancy all the way into motherhood and then all the way back around again if you so wish.

To download the app for free click here for IOS and here for Android.

 *This is a sponsored post, yet all opinions are my own and are completely honest. To read more about this read my disclaimer