A long, warm bath or shower can also make you feel dizzy. Berman recommends adding cooler water to your bath or shower and placing a cold cloth on your forehead if you feel light-headed. Todd says women need to be careful not to rush into any changes in movement.
Berman says lying flat on your back may also cause dizziness in pregnancy because the weight of your uterus puts pressure on the blood vessel called the vena cava. Normally it returns blood to the heart and lungs for oxygenation, but the added pressure can disrupt the flow and make you feel faint. Try to avoid standing for long periods of time, but if your job or lifestyle prevents that, take breaks and move around.
This will engage the blood vessels in your legs and help pump blood back to the heart. Todd says compression stockings can also help provide comfort and improve circulation for women during pregnancy. Mention any feelings of dizziness to your doctor or midwife during your regular appointments. Often dizziness is just a normal pregnancy symptom, but in some instances it can be a sign of a larger issue.
Not to worry: Lightheadedness is not a common sign of miscarriage. Others may have questions about whether dizziness might be a symptom of preeclampsia. But there's no reason to be concerned there, either. Feeling faint is not a common sign of preeclampsia, which is characterized by the sudden onset of high blood pressure during pregnancy , while dizziness is often caused by the opposite problem: low blood pressure.
The bottom line is that if dizziness or lightheadedness are persistent even after you take steps to treat and prevent them, tell your practitioner how you're feeling at your next visit. What to Expect follows strict reporting guidelines and uses only credible sources, such as peer-reviewed studies, academic research institutions and highly respected health organizations.
Learn how we keep our content accurate and up-to-date by reading our medical review and editorial policy. The educational health content on What To Expect is reviewed by our medical review board and team of experts to be up-to-date and in line with the latest evidence-based medical information and accepted health guidelines, including the medically reviewed What to Expect books by Heidi Murkoff. This educational content is not medical or diagnostic advice.
Use of this site is subject to our terms of use and privacy policy. Registry Builder New. Dizziness During Pregnancy. Medically Reviewed by James Greenberg, M. While breathing may become more difficult, the body demands more oxygen during pregnancy. Therefore, pregnant women may feel dizzy when they exercise, breathe heavily, or get too hot.
Although dizziness is not an unexpected issue during pregnancy, in some women, it signals a more serious problem, such as high blood pressure, an infection, or a blood clot. Anyone who experiences sudden, intense dizziness should call a healthcare professional. The approach to treating dizziness during pregnancy varies depending on the cause. Serious heart health problems, for example, will require treatment and monitoring in a hospital. In most other cases, a doctor will monitor symptoms and recommend at-home treatments.
Some options include:. For the majority of pregnant women, the most dangerous complication of dizziness is falling and sustaining an injury. Dizziness can also make driving, heavy lifting, and some other tasks dangerous. A doctor can offer advice on strategies to manage dizziness and whether it is safe to continue driving. When a serious underlying health issue causes dizziness, it increases the risk of injury to both the woman and baby. The woman may go into early labor, develop high blood pressure, or experience other cardiac health problems, some of which can be life threatening, such as a pulmonary embolism.
For this reason, consulting a doctor about any dizziness is crucial. Dizziness is a common issue during pregnancy and often no cause for alarm. However, as it increases the risk of injury to the woman and baby, it is important to contact a healthcare professional and discuss the potential causes. If dizziness lasts more than a few moments, it is best to call a doctor or midwife immediately for guidance.
Pregnancy can cause a host of discomforting symptoms. For many women, dizziness is just one of them, and it is not a sign of a serious problem. However, every symptom offers potentially important information about the health of the woman and baby. In some cases, dizziness can point to an underlying problem, so it is crucial to keep a doctor informed about this symptom and any other health issues that arise. People who experience lightheadedness feel dizzy or faint. Even if a person defines the first week of pregnancy as the week following conception, pregnancy will still not cause dizziness.
The reason for this is that pregnancy begins with implantation 8—10 days after ovulation. Implantation occurs when the fertilized egg embeds in the uterus. It is only after implantation that the body starts producing human chorionic gonadotropin hCG , a hormone that plays a role in many early pregnancy symptoms. By the time a person knows that they are pregnant, they are usually in week 4 or later. In this article, we examine what may cause dizziness in early pregnancy.
We also look at how to manage and prevent dizziness. Pregnancy hormones, including hCG, cause the blood vessels to relax. As a result, blood pressure decreases, which can make a person feel lightheaded. During pregnancy, people need to eat more calories. When a person does not eat frequently enough, their blood sugar can drop, which causes dizziness.
For some people, the nausea of morning sickness causes dizziness. If morning sickness is severe, a person may vomit so frequently that they become malnourished or dehydrated.
During the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, the expanding uterus can put pressure on blood vessels. This pressure may slow blood flow to the heart, making a person feel dizzy.
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