As a general rule, during the third trimester of pregnancy, experts recommend sleeping on your left side. It has something to do with improving circulation as your biggest artery and your biggest vein run up your back and the weight of the baby can cause blood flow to be diminished.
However, if you have heartburn at night, and BOY do I have heartburn, experts recommend that you sleep sitting up in bed to alleviate the pressure on your stomach and hopefully less acid will take the reverse route.
In addition to the heartburn, I'm experiencing edema. Edema means swelling and is completely normal in pregnancy. My feet and ankles are bearing the brunt of the swelling, but my fingers and arms are slightly swollen as well. I haven't worn my watch in over 3 weeks and decided it was safer to remove my wedding band and engagement ring before either reached a point where they would threaten to cut them off. They recommend elevating the swollen entities above the heart, especially at night, to relieve the swelling.
So picture someone sleeping on their left side, sitting up with their hands and feet above their heart. I don't believe even the most experienced Yogi using a Craftmatic (tm) adjustable bed could pull that off.
As a side note, the swelling is making my left ankle hurt. I'm not sure why because its my right ankle that I've broken once and sprained twice. When I get out of bed at night to use the ladies room as required (about 2-3 times) I'm unsteady on my feet because my left ankle tweaks just a bit. I know I am the MOST graceful person you all know (hehe, yeah right) but add to that the front-heaviness of being pregnant. I've given myself a nightly scare of almost falling for the past few nights, making it that much more difficult to get back to sleep.
1 comment:
Keep it up....you're almost to the finish line!
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