My wife is pregnant. We are so excited to have our first. Still, I have wome worries about my wife. She is an emotional person. She has strong anxiety. She does not stop worrying about various things, real or imagined. Even when there is no reason to worry about anything, she will start thinking months into the future and worry about things that might go wrong and ruin her life. Pregnancy is a legitimate reason to have some anxiety, so I don't mean to trivialize that. But then again, having a child is always a reason to be anxious, but that doesnt mean we should let ourselves live our whole lives in fear.

This anxiety has negative repercussions for her personally and for us relationally. Her mind is always on something else. It can be embarrasing when she is in a conversation with my family, and she clearly isnt listening because her mind is on other things. It is annoying when I am trying to talk to her about something and it takes her 5 seconds to register what I said because it isnt her mental priority. To make things worse, she is very slow to acknowledge her faults. When I (rarely and gently) mention things, she gets extremely defensive. This then often involves her excalating the fight by insulting me.

One example of a bad interaction happened this morning. I scrambled her some eggs and served them to her. They were made perfectly. I was hoping for a small "thank you" from her, but instead she attacks me. She wrongly claims that I'd prepared them in a way that is unsafe for a pregnant woman to eat. I pushed back that there is nothing wrong with them, and she eventually (silently) agreed. I don't want us to form bad habits. In fact I want us to form good habits now, given the baby, so I didn't want to dismiss the lack of appreciation for the 100th time. I gently let her know that I would have appreciated a small "thank you" for cooking breakfast.

She erupts saying that I am so rude for saying that. Then she changes the subject and goes on the offensive. She accuses me of spending too much time on my phone. She accuses me of being so thin skinned. I gently said that I do like to feel appreciated, and when I was hoping for some appreciation, she attacked me (wrongfully) about the eggs.

I feel like a constant punching bag. She is a feather in the winds of her emotions, and I have to suffer the consequences like this every day. Even when I talk her down, she rarely apologizes. Even when she does, she goes back to doing the same thing the next day.

I don't want us to live the rest of our life like this. I don't want our children to have this behavior modeled for them. I simply want it to stop. All that requires is her learning to control her emotions and anxiety. I'm frustrated that she constantly fails to do so. She sometimes acknowledges her problem and has talked about getting on SSRIs. That feels like a band-aid solution rather than a root-cause solution, so I would rather her figure this out organically. While maybe unjustified, I also have concerns about meds making her dependent/changing her/effecting the baby.

She wants to go to couple's therapy. I am happy to, but I feel like this isn't really a "both of us" issue. I worry if we pretend it is, that she will fail, then blame me for not keeping up my end of the bargain. Also, she already goes to a therapist, so I am skeptical there is much more imprevement to be had from talking to one. Still, she doesnt go this deep with her therapist, so maybe I should encourage that.

How can I help her?