
Written by Suma rp
This new numbness of hands, legs, feet, belly, and other body parts has puzzled you. But numbness during pregnancy is common and all mothers go through it. It is mostly a play of a hormone called relaxin. As the name suggests, it relaxes the muscles, joints, and ligaments, causing the nerves to get pinched easily while lifting heavy, sleeping, etc. Relaxin is so that you can stretch your body easily at the time of delivery. Moreover, the extra weight of the baby causes the mother to tilt a bit forward. She won’t function effectively if some body parts are too tense, they need to be relaxed.
There are some remedies that will reduce the numbness. For example, on some days you’ll feel more numbness than on normal days. You can simply note the foods that you ate that day. Avoiding those foods will relieve you from the excess numbness. Additionally, some doctor-prescribed medicines will also help. This article helps you understand everything about numbness during pregnancy, its causes, and tips to deal with it.
In This Article
A to-be mother goes through a plethora of bodily changes, and numbness is just one of them. A tingling or a loss of sensation in body parts like legs, hands, face, belly, and so on has been familiar to all pregnant women. These changes are happening because your body is adapting to make your uterus expand for the baby. Moreover, there are a few other reasons for this, explained in easy words below. Just keep in mind, there is nothing you should fear about numbness during pregnancy.
Here are a few symptoms that you may experience when having numbness during pregnancy
Here are a few causes of numbness and tingling sensation during pregnancy
During pregnancy, the hormone relaxin released during this time relaxes your joints, muscles, and ligaments. This is so that your body can stretch. Stretched joints can lead to the feeling of numbness.
An expectant mother’s body tilts a bit forward during standing, walking, or doing anything due to the baby’s weight in her belly. She’ll not be able to walk or function effectively if her joints, muscles, and ligaments are not relaxed.
In this condition, the thigh nerve which gives sensation to the thigh muscles can get compressed leading to the sensation of numbness during pregnancy.
Many women experience sciatica pain during pregnancy. Pregnancy weight gain is the culprit, where the weight gain or the water retention exerts pressure on the sciatic nerve resulting in numbness.
Other than that, there is fluid retention in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters causing hands and feet to swell. It is necessary to make the body soft, and easy to expand. This contributes to numbness as well.
Fluid retention in wrists exerts pressure on the median nerve causing carpal tunnel syndrome in pregnancy. This causes dull ache, numbness, and tingling sensation
However, it also causes a pregnant mother’s joint nerves to get pinched by the weight, especially when they are relaxed. Hence, the body part from which the nerve is connected goes numb. The main concept to understand is that the body parts are relaxed during pregnancy. Thus, the nerves very easily get compressed during sleep, lifting heavy, and so on.
Below are some remedies which will help you to minimize the pain, as it’s not possible to completely avoid this.
There are a couple of treatment options to reduce numbness during pregnancy and the tingling sensation in the hands, legs, back, fingers, and buttocks.
There are only ways to bring down the level of these tingling sensations and numbness. However, it is not possible to completely avoid them. This discomfort will only last as long as you’re pregnant.
There is one thing as normal numbness and another which is not common and is accompanied by some other symptoms. Be watchful of them, as they signify some other health conditions like gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, and vitamin deficiency.
Here are a few symptoms that demand your doctor’s attention
The above symptoms mean that you must visit your doctor. Normally, the swelling and numbness can be dealt with by doctor-approved medication, home therapy, and so on. But here, the cause of this discomfort is some other health condition.
Unlike other pregnancy symptoms, numbness and tingling hardly indicate a serious issue. You need not worry about numbness during pregnancy. If you follow the instructions of this article well, you will see an increased sense of well-being and a reduction in this distress.
During pregnancy, most of your ligaments and nerves relax and there is fluid retention. A nerve in your wrist gets compressed due to fluid retention which leads to numbness and dull ache.
It is called sciatica. The expansion of your uterus is pressing some nerves already – it gets enhanced by some sleeping positions. So, change it as per your comfort.
Yes. It is normal. Exercise helps to deal with this to some extent.
It certainly goes away without a trace. The little one’s arrival will be met with the freedom from numbness and many other pregnancy discomforts.
Suma is a passionate content writer with a strong keenness to understand the miracle of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Suma has successfully transitioned into a full-time content writer and a key contributor at Being The Parent. She leverages on her experimental background in chemistry and experience in writing to come up with well-researched content that helps parents struggling to deal with various medical conditions of their children.Read more.
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