By Kai Njeri
This is an abridged version of Kai’s full essay, Why Do I Feel Depressed During Pregnancy?, published on Beyond Psychology.
We begin in a garden that is going quiet.
The soil is darker. Leaves are fewer, closer to the stem. Pollinators pass through less frequently. From the outside, this looks like something going wrong. But in living systems, this kind of lowering is not a sign of failure. It is a protective intelligence. When conditions shift, ecosystems withdraw from display and turn inward. They thicken roots. They slow what is expendable so that what is essential can be protected.
The womb carries this same wisdom.
Depression during pregnancy is one of the most misunderstood experiences in the landscape of matrescence, the becoming of a mother. It is rarely what it appears to be. What looks like withdrawal may be devotion. What feels like dimming may be the body protecting the conditions needed for something precious to continue forming.
Hormonally, pregnancy is a period of profound reorganization. Progesterone deepens the terrain, slowing pace and thickening boundaries. Blood volume increases. Energy that once fueled outward engagement is redirected toward construction, protection, and endurance. The brain, too, reorganizes. Certain neural pathways are strengthened while others are pruned. Emotional processing deepens. The field of attention narrows to protect what matters most.
In a well-supported environment, this phase is buffered. Others carry the outer world while the pregnant person reorganizes within.
But matrescence today often unfolds without that holding. Pregnancy happens amid economic pressure, social fragmentation, relational strain, and a collective climate shaped by fear and acceleration. The body does not separate these realities from her internal work. She receives them all. And when she is asked to carry too much without enough support, she does what living systems do under pressure: she conserves. She slows. She turns inward.
What is often named as depression may be the sensation of holding too much without enough of what she needs.
This does not mean the experience should be endured without care. It means it deserves to be understood in context. Not as a mood disorder. Not as personal failure. But as a body responding honestly and intelligently to everything she is carrying, in a time that does not always know how to hold women well.
The garden is not broken. It is reorganizing.
And it knows how to finish what it has begun.
Kai Njeri works in birthwork and womb ecology across pre-conception, pregnancy, postpartum, and the emotional landscapes of motherhood. She is based in Tanzania and works with women globally. Read more about Kai
For more information, you can visit our website https://beyondpsychology.eu/