When it comes to celebrity pregnancy announcements, we usually just get the glossy highlight reel. But Law & Order star Odelya Halevi is keeping it honest about how overwhelming pregnancy hormones feel.
The 37-year-old actress, who plays Assistant District Attorney Samantha Maroun on the hit series, just revealed that she is expecting her first child (a baby girl due in December) with her husband, Aaron Mazor.
While Halevi is overjoyed to become a family of three, she recently admitted that the sudden emotional shifts caught her off guard.
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“The thing that I wasn’t fully prepared for was how amplified and intense my emotions would be,” Halevi told People. “I barely recognized myself. Almost like having a split personality.”
For Halevi, the breaking point came during a move into a newly renovated apartment during her first trimester. Despite being excited about the move, she admitted she suddenly, and irrationally, “hated everything about it.”
“I knew it wasn’t rational,” she continued. “I knew I had been counting down the days until we moved in, and I knew I was overreacting.”
Then, the movers accidentally broke a houseplant she had nurtured for four years.
“I cried hysterically, like I had lost a loved one,” she recalled. “Then I started laughing because I realized how dramatic I was being, but I still couldn’t stop crying.”
While it sounds funny in hindsight, that level of emotional whiplash is a very real physiological response. During the first trimester, estrogen and progesterone levels skyrocket. To put it in perspective, a woman produces more estrogen during a single pregnancy than she will throughout the rest of her entire life. This rapid hormonal shift alters how the brain’s neurotransmitters (specifically serotonin) regulate mood. Add in the effects of that progesterone, which relaxes the uterus but triggers intense fatigue and brain fog, and the emotional volatility makes perfect sense.
Halevi’s candidness is a much-needed reminder that morning sickness isn’t the only hurdle in early pregnancy, and feeling overwhelmed by your own emotions is just biology doing its job.
On top of the emotional whiplash, the actress is dealing with some specific food cravings (which is to be expected). Halevi said she first suspected she was pregnant after helping herself to chocolate in the producers’ office, a move she noted was very unlike her. Now, she’s obsessed with eating oatmeal topped with date syrup and a frozen banana.
“I just figured I was eating more of the foods I already loved. But then the other night, I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep after my oatmeal with date syrup and a frozen banana, and I caught myself thinking, ‘I cannot wait to wake up tomorrow so I can eat this again,’” she said. “I never liked oatmeal before I got pregnant.”
Despite the mood swings and the newfound oatmeal obsession, Halevi says that feeling her daughter kick for the first time made all the challenging side effects worth it.
“I can’t wait to meet my little girl,” she shared. “I already feel like I know her in some ways, and I’m so excited to finally see her face, find out who she looks like, and get to know what I can only imagine will be a big personality.”
