Hormones cause changes in body and emotions

You look in the mirror and see your own familiar face. But the you in the mirror has been transformed by the hormones of pregnancy. Some of these changes are physical and some are emotional. And there is not just one hormone involved but several that wax and wane throughout pregnancy.

Think of these hormones as a kind of "command central" coordinating the functions of pregnancy and helping the embryo to develop. Some days you may even feel that the hormones are in charge, and at various points in your pregnancy, there is some truth in this. By the time your baby is born, your progesterone level will be about 300 times higher than normal. Your estradiol level (the main human estrogen) is 100 times higher. Progesterone, the main pregnancy hormone, reaches 1,000 times the pre-pregnancy level. You also will have higher levels of thyroid and cortisol hormones.

There is one hormone that is found only in pregnant women. It's called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), and it's the one that turns the test strip pink or blue in the home pregnancy test kits. This hCG is a kind of growth hormone that increases as the embryo grows. It controls the levels of progesterone and estrogen until the placenta can take over this function.

These hormones can affect your health and actually relieve symptoms of arthritis or collagen disease. Conversely, they can cause nausea, high blood pressure, toxemia and premature labor.

You can expect hormones to:

Affect your emotions. There may be more highs and lows, and your feelings may alter more quickly.

Increase secretions in your mouth, vagina, and nasal passages.

Decrease secretions in your eyes, which may make it hard to wear contact lenses.

Make you breathe harder as your uterus pushes up against your lungs and you draw in more oxygen.

Make you sweat more and alter the way your skin looks.

Affect your digestion so that you may have heartburn, indigestion and constipation.

It will take about a month after your baby is born for your hormone levels to return to normal. While you're enduring the changes these hormones bring, remember that they are very important to the development of your baby. You will return to normal, and your emotions and your body will again feel as familiar as the face in the mirror.

Date last reviewed: October 2002.

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