Although a pregnancy is mostly enjoyable, there are also some demanding periods, made worse by morning sickness, fatigue and so on. If you are thinking about fibromyalgia and pregnancy you may be wondering whether you will be able to pull through and how will your experience with pregnancy be.
Fibromyalgia
There are a lot of people thinking about pregnancy while having fibromyalgia even though it is a relatively unknown condition. The condition refers to the situation when you experience pain in different parts of your body without any other reason.
The condition has different effects on the life of people, limiting their activities and this is why women are worried about pregnancy while having fibromyalgia. Usually the affected people are women and it appears during adulthood or midlife.
Symptoms
As you may have guessed, the symptoms include pain, and this is why fibromyalgia and pregnancy is a bit tricky. In case you are affected, most probably you feel pain in your entire body, including the arms, shoulders, lower back and neck. You could also experience tingling in the toes and fingers.
Pregnancy while having fibromyalgia could come with some other symptoms as well, such as headaches, fatigue and sleeping problems. You could also be affected by abdominal pain and different gastrointestinal complications. Anxiety and depression could also be triggered by the condition.
At the moment the truth regarding the condition is that there is no cure and the treatment options are also quite limited. Usually the doctors offer painkillers and antidepressants. All this is caused by the little knowledge that we have about this mysterious condition. Nobody is certain about the causes of the condition, and this is why nobody is able to treat it.
Fibromyalgia and pregnancy
The truth is that the specialists don’t know much about the way the condition manifests during pregnancy. Even more, it looks like the specialists reach different conclusions. At this point, the only thing clear regarding the matter is that there is need for more research regarding the condition.
In 1997, a study regarding pregnancy while having fibromyalgia was conducted in Norway. There were only a small number of women included and some of them had the condition, while others didn’t. According to this study, the women with fibromyalgia experienced more severe symptoms.
This study has shown, regarding fibromyalgia and pregnancy, that the most demanding period is the third semester because the symptoms appear more frequently. After delivery, the women experienced more severe symptoms for another three months.
Post-partum depression
Another thing that you should consider regarding pregnancy while having fibromyalgia is that more women suffer from post-partum depression in case they are affected by the condition. Nonetheless the good news is that the babies were healthy with a good birth weight and they got born at full-term.
On the other hand there are some doctors who say that there is no connection between fibromyalgia and pregnancy and the symptoms shouldn’t get worse. Even more, they say that the women they treat observe that their fibromyalgia gets better during pregnancy and the symptoms could entirely disappear.
Relaxin
Some of the women said, about pregnancy while having fibromyalgia, that after they got through the phase with morning sickness and nausea they felt better than before they got pregnant. Specialists say that this could be caused by the pregnancy hormone known as relaxin.
When thinking about fibromyalgia and pregnancy you should know that the relaxin amount of the blood increases by 10 times. This hormone is also known as a natural painkiller of the body and this is why it is possible to see an improvement regarding the symptoms.
