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Saturday 27 October 2012

Pregnancy and Snoring

Who'd have thought these two things have anything to do with the other, but as it turns out, they do!

I never had any sort of snoring before in my life, but these last few weeks or so I've had it every night.  So the other day I thought, I've had a few other weird things happen to me during this pregnancy and when I googled their relation to pregnancy I found out they were caused by pregnancy!  So I googled snoring and whadda ya know . . . another weird pregnancy symptom.

If you developed snoring during pregnancy, you probably noticed that it started during the 3rd trimester - this is when it usually happens.  And there are a few things that could be causing it, and one of them could be a serious condition, so here goes:

  • swollen nasal passages - higher levels of estrogen during pregnancy contribute to swelling in the mucous membranes lining the nose
  • increased blood in your system - the blood volume in your body increases when you're pregnant and your blood vessels expand, which can lead to swollen nasal membranes
  • weight gain - if you were already overweight since before pregnancy or you've gained a lot of weight during pregnancy, the extra fat tissue in your neck and throat can cause snoring too
  • high blood pressure - it could be linked to gestational hypertension (aka pre-eclampsia) which is a very serious condition dangerous and even fatal for the mum and baby, the only "cure" of which is early labour induction or c-section.  Here's a quick bit of info about this condition from Wikipedia
So if you've suddenly developed snoring during pregnancy you should mention it to you doc because they don't automatically ask you about it, and it's REALLY important that if you have pre-eclampsia, it be diagnosed before baby's due so that steps can be taken to make delivery safer for you and baby.

But you can improve your snoring by not lying on your back, since you usually don't snore when on your side.  This late in pregnancy you should in any case be lying mostly on your left side if you can (for these reasons).

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