Introduction
By taking care of yourself and taking care of your relationships, you, your partner, and any other support people are creating a safe and secure place for your new baby to come home to. Find a guide below to assess if your relationship is healthy, unhealthy or abusive.
On this page, you’ll also learn how pregnancy can affect your sexuality.
Healthy relationships
- Understanding your relationship
- Is my relationship healthy?
- What is abuse?
- Staying safe and getting support
In this Section:
You’ve likely had many different kinds of relationships throughout your life. There are relationships with family, friends, and co-workers as well as sexual or intimate relationships. Healthy relationships can offer support and comfort and improve overall health and well-being. Having a healthy relationship with your partner and others will help you feel supported throughout your pregnancy.
Understanding your relationship
When you think about your relationship with your partner or others, it might be helpful to think about what makes a relationship healthy, unhealthy or abusive. Sometimes stress, family changes or the responsibilities of having children can lead to conflict—and conflict can sometimes lead to family violence.
Family violence happens when someone uses abusive behaviour to control or harm a family member or someone they have a close relationship with. For some families, abusive behaviour may have started before the pregnancy. Often, it begins or gets worse during pregnancy or after birth.
If you’re not sure if your relationship is healthy, you can use the examples below as a guide. However, it’s also important to trust your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right in your relationship—and you feel safe to do so—think about making changes now. It’s normal for adults to disagree—but abuse is never acceptable.
Is my relationship healthy?
Sharing Feelings | Healthy
Unhealthy
Abusive
|
Communicating | Healthy
Unhealthy
Abusive
|
Disagreements | Healthy
Unhealthy
Abusive
|
Intimacy and Sex | Healthy
Unhealthy
Abusive
|
Trust
| Healthy
Unhealthy
Abusive
|
Time Alone | Healthy
Unhealthy
Abusive
|
Verbal | Healthy
Unhealthy
Abusive
|
Violence | Healthy
Unhealthy
Abusive
|
Table adapted from Alberta.ca/EndFamilyViolence. Information available in multiple languages.
What is abuse?
Abuse is any behaviour used to control another person’s actions. Abuse can happen to anyone, whether you’ve experienced abuse in the past or not. If you grew up with abuse, this behaviour may seem normal to you. However, abuse puts the person being abused and their baby’s health at risk. If the violence or threat of violence has happened once, it’s very likely to happen again. It often gets worse over time, happens more and more often and is more intense. It often develops into a cycle of abuse. Not all abuse fits this cycle. Often, as time goes on, the ‘honeymoon phase’ disappears. If the image seems familiar to you, there is help available.
Staying safe and getting support
It’s okay for adults to disagree, but nobody deserves to be abused or to see abuse. Many people who are abused stay in a relationship to keep their home and family together. However, children who see abuse are harmed by it. No one has the right to abuse another person whether they are an adult or a child.
There are programs for families and partners who have experienced abuse and for those who abuse. There’s help for everyone in the family.
If you’re experiencing abuse, talk with someone like a friend, family member, health care provider or other support person. There are many ways you and your family can get help:
- If you’re in danger, call the police at 911.
- If you’re hurt or have health concerns, go to your health care provider, urgent care centre or emergency department. Tell them how you got hurt.
- Call Health Link at 811 for your local emergency shelter—24/7, when it’s safe for you to do so.
- Call the Government of Alberta Family Violence Info Line toll-free at 310-1818, available 24/7 in more than 170 languages. You can also call this number to get information to help you understand abuse, create a safety plan, access financial supports, and find information about a place to stay, if you need one.
- Call or text Alberta’s One Line for Sexual Violence at 1-866-403-8000 (same number for voice and text). Online chat is also available. Alberta’s One Line for Sexual Violence is private and available throughout Alberta, 9am–9pm.
- Find a lawyer from the Law Society of Alberta Lawyer Referral Service who will answer your questions in confidence—the first consult is often at no cost to you.
- Get support from Legal Aid Alberta, call them toll-free at 1-866-845-3425 to find a lawyer to represent you.
- If you’re new to Canada and want to find out your rights, contact your local Citizenship and Immigration Canada Office. Find more information for new immigrants from the Government of Canada.
- Learn more about domestic violence and family violence prevention.
Healthy sexuality
Sexuality
Healthy sexuality is part of a healthy relationship. Sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves as sexual beings. You may go through changes during pregnancy that can affect your emotions and sexuality. You may be concerned about:
- feeling tired, having nausea or sore breasts
- changing levels of sexual desire, like feeling more or less desire. This can be related to your energy and hormone changes, especially in the second trimester.
- your body’s changing shape and size
Talking about your feelings with your partner may help you to understand each other’s needs.
You have the right to decide to have sex or not. Talk with your partner about consent.
People show their sexual desire in many ways, not just through sexual intercourse. Intimacy and caring for one another also includes cuddling, hugging, kissing and showing tenderness towards each other.
Sexual intercourse is safe during pregnancy unless your health care provider recommends you should not for medical reasons. Your baby is protected by the abdomen, the walls of the uterus and is cushioned by amniotic fluid.
It’s normal to have Braxton-Hicks contractions during sexual activity, especially during orgasm or when the nipples are stimulated.
Safer sex
Practice safer sex, even when you’re pregnant. Safer sex is about protection from STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections). You can pass an STI such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis B, syphilis, genital warts, HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) or HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) to your baby during pregnancy and birth. STIs during pregnancy may also cause miscarriage, premature birth, low birth weight and stillbirth. You’ll be offered routine testing for STIs. Practicing safer sex will reduce your chance of getting an STI.
You’re practicing safer sex when neither you nor your partner are having a sexual relationship with anyone else, you’ve both been tested for STIs and the tests show that neither of you have an STI.
STIs can be spread by people who do not know they’re infected. Use a condom every time during vaginal, anal and oral sex until you’re sure that neither you nor your partner have an STI. The only certain way to prevent an STI is to have no sexual contact (abstinence), including vaginal, anal or oral sex.
To learn more about safer sex call Health Link at 811, your health care provider or visit MyHealth.Alberta.ca – Sexually Transmitted Infections.