All About Pregnancy Hormones

All through your life, your health and well-being depend on hormones, the chemical messengers that coordinate and control the functions of cells and organs. When you're pregnant, hormones play an especially prominent role, helping to protect and nourish your baby and prepare your body for childbirth and motherhood. During each trimester of pregnancy, you'll go through a roller-coaster ride of physical and emotional changes thanks to the rise and fall of various hormones.

How will these shifting hormonal levels affect your body and your emotions? Check out this guide to the most important hormones in pregnancy, which will take you through what they do, and how they might make you feel.

Hormones Play an Important Role in Getting Pregnant

When it comes to your fertility, there are two crucial hormones: luteinising hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH). Your ovaries produce the hormones oestrogen and progesterone in response to LH and FSH, which are produced in the pituitary gland. These hormones all work together to stimulate the development and release of the egg.

HCG Has “You’re Pregnant” Written All Over It

Shortly after an embryo attaches itself to the lining of your uterus, and the placenta begins to form, your body begins to produce the hormone called human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG). This is one of the main pregnancy hormones your body will produce in the first trimester, and the amount of hCG will double every couple of days in those early weeks. HCG signals the body to continue producing progesterone. Because this hormone is unique to pregnant women, and also because it enters your bloodstream and urine, home pregnancy tests are designed to detect it. Bear in mind, if you’re in the very early stages of pregnancy, the amount of hCG in your body may be still too little for a positive test result, so consider taking another pregnancy hormone test a week later if you still think you may be pregnant. Then, if you’re wondering how far along you are, you can get an estimate by using the Pampers due date calculator.

Doctors believe hCG is one of the hormones that may cause morning sickness.

Some Pregnancy Hormones Are Not Unique to Pregnancy

The main hormones your body produces during pregnancy, oestrogen and progesterone, have been active since puberty. Working together, these hormones regulate your monthly cycle and the development of those characteristics that make you female. In early pregnancy, the levels of these hormones increase week by week, and this increase stops your period and fuels the growth of the placenta. Oestrogen and progesterone also help to build up the lining of your uterus, increase blood supply to the pelvic area and breasts, and relax your uterine muscles. These are also the pregnancy hormones behind those intense emotions and mood swings you’re likely to go through during pregnancy. Once your baby is born, the levels of these hormones will fall, which in turn can contribute to the baby blues for some women.

During the early days of your pregnancy, your progesterone levels will increase, which also slows the movement of food through the digestive system, which can cause gas or constipation.

Relaxin Prepares Your Body for Childbirth

Your body produces a hormone call relaxin throughout your pregnancy. This hormone helps relax the ligaments and other joints in the pelvic area, so your body can prepare for delivery.

Oxytocin Helps You Bond With Your Baby

Nicknamed ‘the love and trust hormone’, oxytocin plays a role in helping to form that special bond between mothers and their children. So, as you're falling in love with your baby, you have this hormone to thank.

After pregnancy, oxytocin is one of the hormones that help stimulate milk flow during breastfeeding. The release of oxytocin through breastfeeding also helps stimulate the uterus to contract back to its original size after you’ve given birth.

Prolactin Gets the Milk Flowing

Prolactin is responsible for triggering the production of breast milk, and your body makes this hormone during and after pregnancy. This hormone will initiate and increase milk production, but the act of breastfeeding and expressing milk triggers the body to create more of this hormone, which, in turn, stimulates the breasts to produce more milk.

Over the course of your pregnancy, you'll likely experience many changes that are brought about by hormones. Take some time to learn about all the interesting and wonderful things pregnancy hormones are helping your body achieve, and talk about these with your partner, too, who can be there to help and support you, each step of the way.