Part one

The word that would mark further the pregnancy period is "change", the body and the mental state of pregnant women are changing constantly. How one woman experiences her pregnancy depends on many factors: the desire or not of the pregnancy, the quality of the relationship with her partner, her age, its history, its experiences, a sense of identity and the reactions of intimate friends of the prospect of motherhood.

Essentially, during pregnancy the woman will relive the stages of her own development and especially her relationship with her own mother. Over the fetus living inside her she will raise fears and desires. The contemplation of the life and memories of her childhood will come back very strongly during pregnancy and will allow the expectant mother to identify with the embryo from the first days and understand its needs. The ambivalence she feels toward the fetus (i.e. love or fear, or questioning moments as to whether it is time to have a child) is part of innocent love and should not be experiencing guilt. Pregnancy gives the woman the opportunity to work out again conflicts ranging from the relationship with her own parents. Regardless of the importance of conflict and fears during this period, childbirth scientists also agree that any step towards the realization of motherhood strengthens the ego of the woman.

The woman during the pregnancy goes through a double condition: organic, pregnancy and mental, the investment of a new being, inner, hidden, secret. The relation of the mother to the fetus depends mainly psychic track, but nevertheless acts in parallel with the impositions of reality: inhibit menses and hormonal changes, doctor's attitude and the support or not by the environment. Research has shown that good marital relations protect the woman from the typical fears of a pregnancy. Pregnancy is a joint venture between the man and the woman, but the woman's role is central, we could say that makes the biggest part of the job. The help of her husband transforms the effort to defeat the stress that can occur in pregnancy and to transform it into a voltage adjustment and creation by both parents.

In the wider context of pregnancy, we often see that changes in the image of the pregnant body can lay the anxieties and concerns regarding femininity. If we leave aside modern standards that want the woman to be always young, beautiful, slim and energetic without getting tired we can distinguish many different persons (mother, employee, wife, daughter, mistress). Among these persons there are conflicts, conflicts that become more pronounced when social standards require the woman to keep a role in which one of the others should be banished to grow more. New trends are focusing on the need to have a child and the need of maternity and maintaining good relationship with her husband. But parents today find it extremely difficult to raise children without making undue sacrifices in their lifestyle and freedom. In everyday life a woman makes continuous passages from one person to another. There are good and bad moments, like the desire to tighten a child in their arms until the desire to get rid to work quietly, between complains to their mother regarding her husband and attend groups on good parenting, between the desire to succeed professionally more than the companion and the desire to please him sexually. Every woman finds her own way to organize her life and to express these trends in various ways. The integration of all persons in the feminine one is the culmination of a separation between the role of mother, worker and wife. These three persons are connected and disconnected continuously and should not be considered evidence of a weak character, but the evidence of a structure extremely complex and diverse: the woman who sometimes can believe everything and sometimes collapsing in front of the smallest thing.