Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Pregnancy Part 13

Symptoms you don't hear much about:

1) rhinitis
2) itchy legs
3) rib pain

I think I started getting rhinitis very early on in the first trimester. It was one of my earliest pregnancy symptoms. It's not on the app that I use for tracking symptoms. It feels like allergies or just a small cold. I have a constant stuffy nose, which results in shortness of breath because my nose isn't working properly. I end up doing a lot of mouth-breathing and chewing with my mouth open (which isn't attractive) and I'm surrounded by piles of used Kleenex.

The itchy legs were definitely a second trimester thing. I posted about it on reddit on Oct 7th (pregnancy week 18) but I must have been experiencing it prior to that. It mainly happens at night, after dinner, or while I'm in bed. I got so bad sometimes that it would wake me up in the middle of the night. Dear husband suggested that it was probably due to the dry air we have here in Southern California, but this was way worse than anything I can imagine. It would have me up out of my armchair (where I normally relax each evening) and on the floor stretching and slathering my body with 3 different kinds of lotion.

The rib pain has been going on about a week. It is all the way around my ribcage. I was freaking out because the 3 pregnancy apps and reddit group I belong to didn't mention it as a common symptom at this point in the pregnancy, but then thankfully the Zita West book mentioned it. Apparently, this is something people experience in late second trimester and third trimester.
So I wanted to just recap what I learned at birth class last night:

1) pitocin is a synthetic form of oxytocin. Contractions induced by pitocin are not different than contractions induced by oxytocin (both are painful).
2) epidural is not harmful for the baby. There are side-effects for the mom and potential complications. There is epidural and spinal delivery modes, depending on whether you are having vaginal or Cesarean birth. A component of the drug is fentanyl.
3) narcotics (demerol, morphine) are harmful for the baby because they lead to a lowered heart rate which can lead to Cesarean birth because when fetal heart rate drops, urgency to deliver the baby increases. Also, some laboring moms lose the ability to push naturally while medicated. It may be desirable to ask for an intramuscular injection of the narcotic to reduce transmission to the fetus and to slow the absorption rate of the drug into the body.

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