Motherhood Can Change Your Emotions

Motherhood Can Change Your Emotions

Last update: 08 February, 2018

Motherhood can change you in many ways, including your emotions.

Becoming a mother can bring out new feelings and sensations that you’ve never experienced before. It changes your life forever.

A mother’s brain thinks differently. Motherhood can also affect our emotions, for good or for bad.

Motherhood involves having an emotional bond with your child that is impossible to break, but this varies person to person.

From pregnancy, you will experience emotions differently based on hormonal changes. Later, you will likely find you have developed an instinctive reflex.

It’s a fact that we transform emotionally when we become mothers. Positive emotions make us happier and the negative emotions can have psychological effects after birth.

motherhood affects our emotions

Why motherhood will change your emotions

Motherhood is a revolutionary process that starts at birth. It can be confusing, especially for first-time moms. In addition to physical changes, we experience a full transformation. We won’t even recognize ourselves.

Once the baby is born, life doesn’t stop changing and neither do our emotions. Each action has us modify our perception of the world.

Our feelings will change our mind completely. Without planning it, new sensations have us changing because:

  • Responsibility isn’t the same. Our tasks can wait but our baby can’t. We automatically become the person that our baby depends on. That makes us happy.
  • You are full of positive feelings. You want to share them all with your baby. You set your plans and personal aspirations aside. You think differently about the future. You are filled with tenderness and your heart softens.
  • You grow stronger as a person. You figure out how to overcome the majority of obstacles. Your fears disappear and you take your body to its limits. You stop sleeping and eating the way you did before.
  • A certain primitive instinct grows. It is capable of helping guide you based on the baby’s sounds, identifying smells and making assessments based on the supporting information from your senses.
  • You find new motivation. Now love is the force that makes you persevere. In some ways, you are full of affirmations that can make you fight, defend yourself or get what you want.
  • A new emotional bond is born within you. This bond is different from the one you have with your family or your significant other. Without realizing it, you become a new person. You live and act totally different.
  • Many of your fears will disappear and you will never feel lonely again. Your baby will be physically with you every day of the year. But with time you will also feel overwhelmed with love and happiness to spend time with your baby.
  • We become more patient, less self-centered and more motivated, depending on the situation. We will reveal ourselves, wake up with shock, or run to the rescue effortlessly.

Negative emotions

Although most of the emotional changes you will experience are positive, there are also many negative emotions that affect mothers during pregnancy.

Motherhood makes women more disposed to depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and a certain degree of frustration.

motherhood affects our emotions

At some point during maternity, mothers begin to feel they are losing their independence, capabilities, or even their physical attractiveness.

It is also impossible to avoid feeling anguish and the fear that something bad could happen to your child.

Another disturbing feeling is thinking of the uncertain future. If we are not working or we don’t have a partner to support us, this represents a state of uncertainty that is difficult to control.


All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.


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This text is provided for informational purposes only and does not replace consultation with a professional. If in doubt, consult your specialist.