Perinatal Anxiety

Watch these videos to learn more about perinatal anxiety.

Perinatal Anxiety: What is it?

In this video, Prof. Agnes Higgins tells you what anxiety is, how common it is in pregnancy, and how it might affect you. She gives you 8 questions to ask yourself, to check if your worries are stronger than normal.

Perinatal Anxiety: Seeking Help

This video describes who you might seek help from, and how to do this. Agnes also discusses the concerns women say they have around seeking help and gives some tips on how to deal with your concerns.

Perinatal Anxiety: Creating your Wellness Plan

In this video, Agnes explains ten things you can put in your wellness plan, to work on reducing your anxiety.

• If you would like more information and help about reducing your fear of childbirth, have a look in particular at the sections in Week 3, such as Step 3.4 and Step 3.5. Working through the full six weeks of sessions will also help. The more knowledge you have, the more relaxed you will be, as you will understand how the body works and copes throughout labour.

Take this short survey on your feelings about labour and birth.

This survey is for your own self-assessment, and any free text submitted will be included in the word cloud featured in step 2.7. The information will not be used for research or any other purposes. The survey is optional and should take less than 5 minutes to complete. Your participation or otherwise will not affect your course progress, marks or FutureLearn profile. All information is collected anonymously.

We’ll ask you the same questions again in Week 5, so that you can compare and see if your views are the same or if they have changed. In Step 2.7, we will also be showing you a word cloud of the words written by all learners, and asking you to reflect on whether your words are similar to other women’s and, if so, in what way?

A warm welcome to any Irish Traveller women reading this page. Have you heard of Pavee Mothers? It is a special section of Pavee Point’s website, written by Traveller women for Irish Traveller women, with information to support you during and after your pregnancy. You can find it at the link below.