Twenty-two-year old ‘Mapalesa Lenka of Ha Bulara in the district of Quthing is pregnant with her second child. She is despondent, a bundle of nerves who is not even sure if she should get excited or not, at the eventual arrival of her baby.
She is battling with prenatal anxiety.
According to experts, prenatal anxiety also known as pregnancy anxiety, refers to having feelings of nervousness, tension, or fear during pregnancy.
The main symptoms of prenatal anxiety include feeling nervous, anxious or on edge frequently, an uncontrollable sense of anxiousness as well as worrying excessively about things, especially your health or your baby.
Expectant mothers also sometimes find it difficult or impossible to relax or feel restless and hard to stay still.
Lenka says her first pregnancy in 2020 was a challenging experience as she had to drop out of school to take care of her child, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She professes to be happy and excited to be a mother again.
However, the 14-week pregnant woman says she is always sad and downhearted, for no reason; all she does is cry especially when is alone.
“I get irritable over everything to do my partner who spends much of his time at work in South Africa, and who has left me to handle household responsibilities on my own.
“I am experiencing a financial strain and lack of family support. My husband’s irregular financial support is insufficient to cover the family’s needs,” she explained.
On top of that, she said, her family disapproves of her relationship with the husband and her decision to have a second child. This has led to strained relationships with both her family and her in-laws, no wonder she is always alone and has embraced the solitude.
“I have this intense anxiety and fear for the health of my unborn child. What if something goes wrong? How would my child be affected?
“There are times when I even considered suicide as the only way out of this mess. On one of my pre-natal check-ups, I was told my mental health had deteriorated further. That was after I experienced severe abdominal pain and reduced foetal movement.
“I have been going for therapy and was given a plan for managing my depression. However, I have not noticed any significant improvement in my mental state, but rather feel more miserable and hopelessness surrounds me,” Lenka said.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), about 10 percent of pregnant women and 13 percent of women who have just given birth experience a mental disorder, primarily depression.
The organisation states that in developing countries this is even higher, i.e. 15.6 percent during pregnancy and 19.8 percent after child birth.
“In extreme cases mothers’ suffering might be so severe that they may even commit suicide. In addition, the affected mothers cannot function properly,” it says.
WHO indicates that as a result, the children’s growth and development may be negatively affected as well.
It continues to say that maternal mental disorders are treatable. Effective interventions can be delivered even by well-trained non-specialist health providers.
Meanwhile, a clinical psychologist and volunteer at Mohlomi, Tebello Mochaba said the most common mental health pregnant women face challenges is anxiety.
Mochaba said there is a lot of pregnancy anxiety, both prenatal anxiety and post-natal anxiety, not to mention depression.
She explained that there are many risk factors in maternal terms, looking at social support; it could be a partner, or the immediate circle and then there is the work environment and lastly the maternal health.
“There is a lot that can determine the impact of the pregnancy and that of the child and mother bond because there are a lot of hormonal changes.
“A lot of studies have shown that if a mother experiences anxiety or stress during their pregnancy, it can relate to difficulties of infant mother bond, and the child’s attachment is not secure because the best form of attachment between a child and a caregiver is attachment,” she said.
Mochaba noted that many a time, when a mother is dealing with her anxiety, the child ends up developing an anxious avoidant attachment.
She explained that anxiety passes onto the child because either the mother cannot really be there in the ways the child needs because she is also struggling or in the development of the child, there might have been chemical hormonal switch-ups.
The chemical hormonal switch-ups is usually caused by when a child Is not getting enough nutrients they need, because the mother is not eating.
She also indicated only suicidal pregnant women are admitted at Mohlomi Hospital.
According to the 2024 Lesotho Vulnerability Assessment Report, around one percent of households reported that a member got married before the age of 18 in the last year.
The report said the majority of these early marriages were from rural areas, predominantly from female-headed households, and most frequently from very poor and poor households.
“The ages of the children involved ranged from 15 to 17 years old, with 17 years old being the most common age.
“The reasons cited for child marriage in the households that reported it included pregnancy as the main reason, followed by peer pressure, lack of food, and adherence to social norms,” it reads.
Non-profit Organisation, Help Lesotho’s has a Young Mother Programme which has a comprehensive approach to capacitate pregnant teenagers and adolescent mothers with strategies and support to cope with the repercussions of being young, often single, mothers.
This involves emotional turmoil, dropping out of school, expulsion from family units, lack of support from the father of the child, stigma and rejection from family and community members, poverty, stress and livelihood insecurity. The program fosters capacity in the participants to build their personal resilience, learn to make healthy decisions, and support one another through their challenges.
