Pregnancy Symptoms: "Heartburn"

Many women get heartburn during pregnancy. Heartburn is a burning feeling in your stomach, sometimes rising up to your throat. 

It occurs when the valve between the stomach and the food pipe (esophagus) are unable to prevent the stomach acids from passing back into the esophagus. Pregnancy can increase the frequency of heartburn because the hormone progesterone causes the valve to relax. This allows the stomach acid to pass into the esophagus and irritate the lining.

How pregnant women feel about it? 

"Pregnancy heartburn is seriously the worst and the STRUGGLE IS TOO REAL",  or "I've eaten too much again for lunch.... I have heartburn ... help! Worst thing about pregnancy has to be the heartburn!" and again "After this pregnancy, I hope I never, ever get heartburn again. EVER!"

Even for women who have never experienced it before in their first pregnancy, heartburn may occur for the first time in their next ones while they are pregnant as a new symptom. That burning sensation in the chest and throat, and sour, acidic taste in the mouth, may become an all too familiar sensation for some of them.

In fact, up to 50% of women are likely to experience heartburn at some point in their pregnancies, and I was definitely one of them! And like I said above, I had the unpleasant surprise to have it show up at my third pregnancy and I do agree, It's the worst!

What can you do to relieve heartburn during pregnancy?

There are several ways mentioned in many articles about how to minimise your discomfort with heartburn but what I was doing is quite simple but that helped me:

Drink water as often as you can

• Drink water to avoid my stomach of being too empty
• Eating small meals (I had to cut my full meal of the day in 2 because I've realised I just couldn't eat it all at once anymore, I was always feeling too full even just after a snack) Instead of three square meals a day, try five or six smaller ones.
• Sit in an upright position after eating and wait more than an hour after eating to lie down. I
  promise you, one hour is definitely not enough.
• Avoid spicy, greasy, fatty foods and acidic fruits like lemons or citruses and you'll feel much better. I ate spices all though my first pregnancy and i love spicy food but with my 3rd, no way it was like testing a bit of what hell can do in your body especially at night.
• Keep my head and upper chest elevated at night

Few other things you can do to relieve the symptoms I've read about but not really worked for me are to:

• Eat yogurt or drink a glass of milk
• Try a tablespoon of honey in a glass of warm milk

Besides I'm lactose intolerant and have been blessed with the Irritable Bowel Syndrome years ago; 

Find out more about IBS by clicking here: "IBS and pregnancy"

In case of severe symptoms, my gynaecologist prescribed "Gaviscon" which helped those days I couldn't resist a fruit salad or accidentally ate a spicy meal at a friend's place.

Is it true that having lots of heartburn during your pregnancy means the baby is going to have a lot of hair? 

Well, I don't think so because I firmly believe hair is a genetic heritage not a total hazard.

Can I get rid of heartburn completely during pregnancy?

Well, every trimester is different and for me I had it at it worse during the first trimester and it gradually subsidised in the second trimester. I'm now in my 3rd trimester and it's pretty gentle "there day and night but not gone".

Free of Heartburn?

Every pregnancy is different, if you don't have this symptom today, it might catch up with you
sooner or later so don't brag or celebrate out loud that you know it all before you've been through it. First time moms should learn to adopt good habits from pregnancy one to deal with the next with more self control.

"This is the first of my reviews on pregnancy symptoms. Hope I will have most of them covered before I'm in the Labour and Delivery room in June. French vlogs about these topics can soon be found on my youtube channel."

Hoping these tips will help you in any way, have a safe and joyful pregnancy :)

Aevermint