Insomnia During Pregnancy

Insomnia During Pregnancy


Contents:


Insomnia and Pregnancy

The problems with sleep are very widespread phenomenon while pregnancy. The insomnia of a many women begins already on the first trimester of pregnancy. There are many thoughts in the head of the future mother, which do not allow to go to sleep, she can not find comfortable position, tumbles, growing abdomen starts to detain on the second trimester and on the third trimester, thoughts about the forthcoming labor prevent from falling asleep. How to go to sleep then? To conquer the insomnia during pregnancy, you should establish its causes and remove them either on your own or with help of specialists.

Causes

Hormonal changes in the woman`s organism are able to provide insomnia already on the earliest terms. For example, the level of progesterone and a number of other hormones increases during pregnancy. Mustering all strengths for pregnancy development, at the same time, they put an organism into state "of operational capability" and sometimes just do not allow to relax. The number of causes for the insomnia becomes ever greater with increase of the term of pregnancy.

The causes of pregnant women's sleep disturbances can be the following:

Physiological

  • difficulties in finding of a comfortable posture (the increased weight and the grown abdomen make this process much more difficult);
  • back and loin pain;
  • movements of the fetus;
  • frequent urinates at night time (the uterus having enlarged in its proportions pushes on the urinary bladder, now the bladder must be emptied much more often);
  • heartburn (the disturbances of operation of the gastrointestinal tract are at all typical for pregnancy);
  • convulsions (especially often pregnant women complain about convulsions of legs);
  • itch in the area of the abdomen because of a sprain of the skin;
  • dyspnea (the increased bodyweight embarrasses respiration, in addition, the uterus presses on lungs).

Psychological

  • chronic fatigue;
  • nervous stain, stress (fear of the forthcoming changes, warning about the child, fear before the labor);
  • nightmares.

Any of these causes will be quite enough to deprive a woman of sleep and most often they are combined! Try to choose from the below listed tips only those ones, which are suited to your case, which you personally like. If some recommendation does not help, try to use another. Each situation is individual; each woman needs to choose her method.

How to Deal With Insomnia?

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During a Daytime

  • Avoid overstrain. Weariness accumulated during the day does not always lead to sound sleep, sometimes it turns out after the hard day you are just not able to relax.
  • If you got used to sleep sometime in the daytime, try to refuse this habit for several days or at least shorten time of your day sleep, thus, maybe, nocturnal sleep will be restored.
  • If the nightmares, about which you can not forget then, torment you, in the morning or day talk about them with your close persons (your husband, mother, friend). The psychoanalysts consider discussion of night dreams a very effective means of overcoming of fear before them: first, the relatives will try to calm you and most probably they will succeed and second, turning into words your vague apparitions, which tormented you, you will discover on your own that there are no special reasons for fear.
  • During the day, find the time and a possibility for doing simple feasible exercises. Swimming is considered very helpful, as well as walks on foot, and even dancing (in the latter case everything, of course, depends on the term of pregnancy and your general health).
  • Your body must get used to the fact that the bed is just a place for sleep: leave off a habit to lie in a bed – do not read, watch TV, etc. in a lying position.

In the Evening

  • Do not eat heavy food shortly before sleep: you will roll over in bed with a full belly until the very morning.
  • Do not schedule duties requiring physical and intellectual efforts for the evening.
  • Avoid emotional pressure and stressful situations in this day period (do not choose evenings for unpleasant conversations and violent explanations, ask the relatives and the acquaintances not to call you in the evening and, naturally, you do not watch action movies and thrillers for the night).
  • Take a warm bath or a shower before sleep. You can add chamomile decoction or several drops of some aromatic oil (lavender oil, for example) to the bath – it will help you to relax.
  • Try to drink less in the evening (ensuring that total intake of liquid in the day bases 6-8 glasses), it will help you to cope with such a cause of the insomnia as the necessity of the bladder's emptying often.
  • Before going to bed drink a cup of warm milk (if you do not like taste of milk, one can add cinnamon, some honey or sugar) or tea from herbs (in this case, often a chamomile possessing relaxing effect is recommended).
  • And one needs to abandon from the usual energizing tea (not to mention coffee!).
  • By the way, milk contains tryptophan, which one can call soft natural somnifacient – this substance possesses calming, sedative effect.
  • One can eat a small sandwich with boiled turkey before sleep (meat of this bird is also rich in tryptophan).
  • If in the evening you feel faintness, sickness, your heartbeat becomes more frequent, perhaps the cause of your insomnia is hypoglycemia (low level of blood sugar). In such a case sweet tea, juice, or just a piece of sugar can help you (and you should certainly tell the doctor about these symptoms so that he would confirm or refute this diagnosis and take corresponding measures).
  • Before sleep smear the skin of the abdomen with lotion, it can impede an emergence of itch.
  • Ask the husband or someone of your relatives to do you a massage before sleep: it will give a possibility to relax, remove the back and loin pain, the massage of feet and ankle joints will help to avoid convulsions. Even a shiatsu point massage can become effective, if someone in your family commands its methodology, why not to try it.
  • The fact, that homeopathic remedies correctly chosen by a specialist will provide aid in struggle against the insomnia, is not excluded.
  • Sex will help someone to go to sleep. If you do not have medical contraindications for sex, you feel desire and know, that you usually feel sleepy after sex – might just as well?

Well, the evening ritual of preparation to sleep is over and you are already in a bed. What to do in the night so that a desired dream would fly down to you?

At Night

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  • First of all, try not to be nervous, do not think about the fact of not being able to go to sleep, as this will worsen the situation.
  • It must be cool in the bedroom (but one must avoid overcooling of feet – one can sleep in socks). If there is no possibility to sleep with an open ventilator window, one needs to air premises well before sleep.
  • Nightclothes (shirt, pajamas) must be comfortable, sewn from natural fabrics, not binding movements and respiration.
  • It is most nice of all to sleep on a comfortable mattress. Find out, what suits you, perhaps, it is the feather bed or a sculptured mattress with a surface reminiscent of cartons for transportation of eggs or, on the contrary, you it will be easier to sleep on a hard surface and you need simply to add boards under your mattress.
  • The pregnant woman will require a lot of pillows (at least 3) of the most different shape and extent for sleep. You are lucky if, you manage to acquire a special pillow for pregnant women – it is cuniform and it is specially intended to put it under the abdomen. After the labor you will be able to use it while feeding. The pillows may be put under the side, neck, you may clamp it between legs; you can cover all the mattress with pillows – such a refined bed will take the form of your body better. You can add an extra pillow under the head – in some cases, it does not only ease respiration, but also turns out to be an effective tool against heartburn.
  • Look up the comfortable posture, in which you could fall asleep. If you are not able to sleep on the abdomen and back – it means you will have to lay on a side (some physicians believe, that the influx of blood to the uterus is reinforced, when you lay on the left one).
  • But one is to remember on the last months of pregnancy, it is not recommended to sleep on the back because the inferior hollow vein, which is passing along the spine can be clamped down under the weight of the uterus. This is the cause of the fainting fit of the pregnant woman and the child's oxygen starvation.
  • As soon as you feel approach of sleep, try to breathe slowly and deeply.
  • The fact that aromatherapy will help you is not excluded. The droplet of lavender oil can turn useful not only in a bath, but in a bed as well.
  • If you did not manage to fall asleep during half an hour, stand up, come out to the other room, page through a magazine or read a book able to evoke a sleep, begin to knit, listen to calming music and set off to bed only when you will feel approach of sleep.

Sleeping Pill in Pregnancy

As majority of other drugs, it is better, of course, not to use somnifacients in your situation. Doctors decisively insist that one must not use somnifacients on the first trimester of pregnancy, when active formation of embryo tissues takes place and will subsequently hardly recommend you to take these drugs without sufficiently serious grounds.

What Can Not Be Done?

In any case, memorize: under no circumstances, do not take an independent decision about application of somnifacient! Even if before pregnancy you already resorted to it. Even if your pregnant friend took it. Only your doctor can take the decision about use of somnifacient!

One Comment

  • Maria says:

    I’m at the second trimester and I suffer from insomnia. I don’t know how to deal with it, because pills are prohibited

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