Throughout your pregnancy you may find yourself experiencing numerous symptoms, thinking: is this normal? You talk to your friend about it, and she confirms it: the symptom you are having is downright weird. But, never fear! Some pregnancy symptoms may seem strange, when they are in fact one hundred percent ordinary.
Bleeding Noses
If you’re anything like me, before you got pregnant you may have never had a nose bleed in your life. Then one morning in the shower you see it: blood. When I first noticed it, I freaked out. I thought something was wrong with my baby. Nope, just my nose. If you’re experiencing this symptom, don’t worry – it’s weird, but it’s not that weird. As your pregnancy progresses, the blood supply in your body increases to help ferry oxygen to the fetus and your uterus. The increased blood supply, combined with the hormone progesterone, causes the blood vessels in the nose to dilate and widen, which causes more frequent nosebleeds.
Wanting to Eat Dirt
Many women experience food cravings or aversions during pregnancy, but you may not know that some women want to eat some pretty gross things, such as dirt or coal. Another common craving is to chew on ice chips or cubes. While these cravings are relatively common, Dr. Ruben Mesa from Mayo Clinic notes that wanting to eat these things may be a sign of low iron (anemia). If you are craving or wanting to chew any non-food substances such as ice, dirt, coal, clay, or paper, speak to your care provider to ensure that you are not deficient in iron.
Dribbling
Have you noticed that you’ve been waking up with a big drool patch on your pillow in the mornings? You may be feeling queasy and don’t want to swallow all the saliva in your mouth. Excess saliva is a common, but strange pregnancy symptom that experts still don’t know the cause of. While it is harmless, if it is making you feel nauseous you can try sucking on a mint or a lemon, or brushing your teeth and spitting the saliva out.
Going up a Shoe Size
You also may suddenly realize that your shoes feel a bit tight, or you may not be able to get your feet in them at all. It’s common during pregnancy to retain fluid, which is part of what causes bloating in the first trimester. It also causes your legs and ankles to swell, so it’s not surprising that your feet do too! I found that the easiest way to deal with this was to go to a cheap store and buy a (very) cheap pair of slip-on, larger shoes, and I wore my flip-flops a lot!
Farting
One thing that I think many women don’t expect (or don’t talk about!) is the farting. Due to the hormones progesterone and relaxin that increase during your pregnancy, the lining of your digestive tract relaxes. This may seem like all your food is going to travel through your digestive system quickly, but in fact the opposite happens. Because the muscles of your digestive system have relaxed, they push the food through slower, and take longer to break it down and digest it. This, naturally, creates more gas as the bacteria in your gut have more time to chow down on your food as it passes through. The reason for this slowed down digestion is a good one though: it allows all the nutrients to be extracted from your food, to feed your growing baby! So next time you are farting up a storm, just think about how all that food is being digested ever so slowly not to cause everyone to leave the room, but for nourishing your sweet little baby.
Share This Blog
About This Blogger
