Mood and pregnancy hormones

When someone complains of mood swings in pregnancy people will often say it's just 'pregnancy hormones'. But what role does hormone fluctuation really play in pregnancy depression?

Most women know what the key pregnancy hormones are. The one that most people don't know about is a hormone called CORTISOL....more about that below.

In the beginning of pregnancy, the hormone picture is sort of like that of an extended and increasing premenstrual syndrome. The ovaries pump out estrogen and progesterone to maintain the tiny new not-quite-baby. (A high level of progesterone is part of what can cause a premenstrual syndrome - PMS - in some women. Women who suffer from particularly bad PMS are at risk for low mood in pregnancy.)

THE early pregnancy-specific hormone, called beta-HCG, is the hormone that is tested for in a blood or urine pregnancy test and it is specific to early pregnancy. Along with the other pregnancy hormones, it helps to sustain the early pregnancy before the fetus is well-established in the uterus, and it also helps the baby and uterus to 'grow' the placenta. Some people believe that beta-HCG is the main cause of early pregnancy 'morning' sickness. Many women feel low in mood when they suffer from pregnancy sickness, and women who suffer from particularly bad morning sickness are more likely to go on to experience pregnancy depression.

As I mentioned before, CORTISOL is also one of the important pregnancy hormones, key to pregnancy continuation. Cortisol is the body's natural stress-coping hormone, in non-pregnant as well as pregnant individuals. If your body feels stress, from pain, infection or emotionally threatening stimuli, this normally starts a cascade of hormones that help your body and brain to cope with this perceived stress. The first hormone in the cascade is produced in your brain and is called CRH. This in turn causes the production of a second hormone just outside the brain, called ACTH. ACTH travels in your blood stream to the adrenal glands where it causes them to release CORTISOL. Cortisol acts on tissues in the body to help you deal with stress, but it quickly switches off its own production by feeding back to the brain and shutting off the production of CRH and ACTH. Clever hormone! Keeping stress in check so that you don't become to overwhelmed by it, but keeping itself in check too so that you can keep on responding to new stresses many times a day. This is the hormone system that has been shown to be disrupted in depression. click here to see the role that the body's stress system plays in depression. The most remarkable thing about the body's stress hormone system in pregnancy is how much it changes from it's usual pattern. And it is also quite staggering how high the levels of cortisol and the other hormones go as pregnancy progresses...to prepare for the stress of labour, perhaps??? Women who are susceptible to depression in pregnancy are more likely to have an abnormal response pattern in their stress hormones. If you are curious to know more about the fundamental changes of the stress hormone system component of pregnancy hormones, click here.