Pregnancy Brain

"Jess, you're missing the point. It's not about where you go, it's about you guys being there for us. I mean, okay, so maybe we're a little over emotional and maybe we do get a little demanding, but that's because our hormones are running wild! I mean we're happy, we're sad, we're hot, we're cold, we're huge! And all we want are ridgy potato chips and a nice slice of juicy watermelon with a side of Swiss chocolate. Now is that too much to ask? I don't think so!" (bursts into tears) —-Becky Katsopolis, Full House

A woman's body goes through a lot of changes during pregnancy, all to accomodate the new life she's hosting and will soon bring into the world. Many of these changes are hormonal, and can mess with her emotional balance. It's natural for her to be cranky or weepy or forgetful now and then. In real life, most hormonal issues can be resolved by a visit to the doctor, who will make suggestions like diet changes, light exercise, meditation, maybe even medications if they're safe for the baby and the mood issues or memory loss are impeding the woman's daily life.

Don't expect this in the media, though. Like with all pregnancy tropes, TV, movies, and other sources can and will blow this out of proportion. The second a woman becomes pregnant, her moods will be all over the place. She'll be weeping her head off one minute, screaming at people the next, forgetting something a person just said to her a second ago (or even something she herself said), then laughing hysterically over nothing. This is usually played for laughs or as a setup for schmoopy reassurance that everyone loves her just the way she is, no matter how much her moods are negatively affecting those around her.

Can easily be a setup for The Unfair Sex, in which the pregnant lady's mania is meant to be played for sympathy and the big, jerky male must apologize for not realizing how hard it is to be pregnant because nothing a man goes through could ever compare to carrying a baby for nine months and the pain of childbirth.

This trope is so exploited in media that fans will automatically assume that any woman acting crazy and moody has a bun in the oven. Hell, the shows themselves even seem aware of this, with this being the setup for Mistaken for Pregnant. (Usually the real culprit is menopause.)

Examples of Pregnancy Brain in the media

Fan Works

• One Bleach fic has a pregnant, overdue Orihime bawling at the drop of a hat. Sometimes for the tiniest reasons (the weather, she thinks she's a bother to the people upstairs for some reason, Ishida making a joke about regretting going to medical school), but she also does a good deal of wangsting about her past "failures". The narrative lampshades this in saying one would think the baby had died given how she carries on!
• Pidge tends to get this in Voltron: Legendary Defender fics. One fic has her going insane after misplacing a stuffed bunny, another one has her in a rage at a dirty floor, and another has her wanting to kill her husband Keith for singing "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." Not because it's an annoying song, but because, as Colleen puts it, pregnant women are triggered by hippos because it reminds them they're getting fat.
  • Sometimes happens to Keith in mpreg fanfics, usually via having him tear up easily thanks to hormones. One fic has him burst into tears at seeing a pouch of baby food puffs, because it reminds him that babies are so vulnerable they'll choke if they eat regular food.
• A Phoenix/Maya fic has Maya falling apart during a Christmas party when the turkey burns, then later sobbing when Phoenix sings her a love song as a gift. She doesn't know why she's so hormonal until she counts the days from her last period and realizes she's pregnant.
• Expect this in mpreg fics, especially if the pregnant male is canonically a character very much in control of his emotions or even The Stoic. This Chakotay/Paris parody fic even lampshades this trope and calls it out by saying that in real life, most women aren't actually as prone to histrionics as the pregnant Paris in the fic.

Film (Live-Action)

• Expect this in any Lifetime Movie of the Week.
• The TV movie An Unexpected Life has the heroine crying over a picture one of her kids made for her, citing hormones as the reason because the picture itself is terrible.

Literature

• In one Baby Sitters Club book, Kristy gives her mother Elizabeth an invitation for a Mother's Day Surprise the group is planning for the mothers of the children they sit for. When Elizabeth starts tearing up, Kristy suspects she might be pregnant. She's not, though.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Roseanne's fictitious final season, Darlene gets weepy a couple times, both out of happiness at her parents winning the lottery and then in sadness at the thought of moving out of their old house. Roseanne lampshades it by marveling at how sweet the hormones are making the usually-acerbic Darlene. "Kinda makes me wish you got knocked up years ago."
  • An earlier episode has Roseanne's friend and Dan's stepmother Crystal screaming and snapping at everyone in the late stages of her pregnancy.
• Fran Fine on The Nanny goes through this in her final days of pregnancy, weeping her head off or snapping at people in a rage over everything.
• One episode of Home Improvement has a friend of Tim's bring his heavily pregnant wife with him when he comes for a hot rod party in the garage. Said wife starts bawling while cutting onions, saying she doesn't know if it's the onions or the hormones making her cry. The other women respond in unison: "hormones."
• The I Love Lucy episode "Pregnant Women are Unpredictable" is possibly the earliest TV example. Lucy spends the whole episode depressed and sniffly thinking Ricky doesn't love her, just their unborn baby. Then when he takes her out on a double date with the Mertzes and sings a love song, she starts crying because she thinks he doesn't care about the baby.
• Phoebe has a bad case of this in one episode of Friends, in the late stages of her stint as a surrogate mother. She shifts moods at the drop of a hat; laughing hysterically, snapping at everyone, then crying hysterically and claiming she doesn't know why. Though she does later realize that she's having separation anxiety; she feels close to the babies she's carrying and is sad at the prospect of this time being over. Later revisited a bit when she wants to keep one of the triplets during the episode where she gives birth.
  • Rachel mostly avoids this until it's almost her due date, and after she's long past said date. Then she starts snapping at everyone for offenses such as breathing too loudly.
• The page quote comes from an episode Full House during Becky's pregnancy arc, when she's being more demanding than usual. When she starts crying after her big rant, Jesse immediately apologizes for being insensitive.
  • In the episode after she gives birth, she has quite a few mood swings, leading Jesse to lie about how he accidentally mixed up the twins in fear of her reaction. She does find out, though, and is more bothered that he tried to hide the truth from her rather than the fact he made a mistake at all. Thankfully, she tells him this without flying off the handle, and they solve the problem by comparing the babies' footprints.
• Annie starts the third season of 7th Heaven three months pregnant and being a massive crab to her husband Eric, whose attempts to make her feel better just piss her off more (getting her health food for lunch "because he thinks she's huge", death-glaring at him when he got chicken salad instead of tuna by accident). Another episode has her taking up the piano as a "pregnancy project" and snapping at Eric when he suggests she's flirting with her instructor, a handsome young man. (She wasn't, but said instructor does tell her she's lovely and it makes her smile. Eric realizes that being complimented by someone other than her biased but loving husband was what she needed all along!) For the rest of her pregnancy arc, though, she's more or less sane and balanced.
  • A later episode has Annie weeping or getting cranky over the smallest things, and Eric thinks she's pregnant again. It turns out she's beginning menopause.

• One episode of According to Jim has him taking advantage of his wife Cheryl's pregnancy-induced forgetfulness to convince her it was her idea to turn the basement into a "man cave" instead of a room for their daughters.
• Carol on Step by Step develops borderline Super OCD in one episode during her pregnancy with Lily, fussing over everything from the way the towels are folded to how the ingredients are prepared on a pizza. Another one has her so insecure about her pregnancy weight that she freaks out when Frank has to do an installation in an ex-girlfriend's house.

Western Animation

• Family Guy, of course, takes this to extremes in a cutaway that shows a pregnant Lois puking all over herself and then bawling like a banshee. All because Chris asked where his jacket was.
• Happened retroactively to a female spider in Adventure Time, who was snapping and yelling at her mate shortly before she gave birth to a huge litter. Doubles as a Surprise Pregnancy, since she didn't seem to know she was carrying them.