Women feel handcuffed, and rightly so, when they are pregnant and suffering from a severe headache. Normally, most women will simply take a pain pill for their excruciating headache, but the health of their unborn baby now takes precedence over their suffering. Taking painkillers may cause harm to the baby so this option is no longer available. The only option left is using natural treatment approaches, but which ones?
Pregnancy is a very special time in a woman's life and requires a woman to go through some pretty huge and amazing changes to both their lives and their body. Not only will the new baby change their life tremendously, but bodily changes will also occur during pregnancy, particularly due to wild hormonal changes. Headaches are one of the most common types of pain experienced during pregnancy and fluctuations in hormone levels, especially estrogen, can play a big role in causing them.
Women who have never experienced a migraine attack before often experience their first one during pregnancy. Most of the time these attacks occur during the first trimester and become less frequent during the latter two trimesters, but no matter when they happen they're painful.
The first thing that needs to be done is to find the cause. Hormonal changes are the biggest culprit, but it's not the only one. Headaches during pregnancy can also be caused by poor posture. However, poor posture is more likely to cause a headache during the third trimester and can be helped by maintaining proper posture. Other causes of headaches during pregnancy are stress, lack of sleep, dehydration, hunger, or low blood sugar.
Obvious relief methods for these headache causes will be reducing stress, improving sleep habits, drinking ample amounts of water, and eating smaller meals more often. Many women who drink coffee will quit once they find out they're pregnant. However, caffeine withdrawal can cause headaches, and the symptoms are most severe when consumption is stopped all at once. Gradually weaning yourself from coffee will stop or at least lessen the effects greatly. If you are thinking about getting pregnant you should wean yourself off coffee before getting pregnant in the first place.
Most painkillers are not recommended during pregnancy so these should usually be avoided. Other popular natural relief approaches such as taking herbs feverfew and butterbur are also not recommended for pregnant women. Now that we know what not to do, what are things we can do? The treatment options you choose will depend on the type of headache you have. Tension headaches may be relieved with a cold compress to the back of the neck while sinus headaches can have a warm compress applied to the sinus areas in the face and possibly temples.
Lying down in a quiet and dark room can help relieve the stress and pain of most headache types, including migraines. Eat smaller meals more often, drink more water, and maintain good posture. Massaging your temples is another great way to relieve pain, especially migraine headache pain.
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