Drink More Water

The last few weeks of my pregnancy have been miserable.  Absolutely miserable.  I've done little more than lay in bed and panic about how I'm going to get through the next 7 weeks without dropping dead of feeling like crap.  Now that we have the cesarean section booked - March 23 - it seems like that date will never come, especially in light of the new batch of horrible pregnancy symptoms that I'm experiencing.

It started with a little swelling, which is, of course, normal in the third trimester of pregnancy.  Remember the picture of my wedding ring that wouldn't quite fit?  Well, the swelling got a whole lot worse than that.

Okay, this isn't actually my swollen hand, but it's pretty darn close.  It seemed to happen almost overnight - I woke up one morning and my fingers and palm were so swollen that I couldn't quite close my hand into a fist.  Once I got up and moved around a bit, the swelling, went down, but it returned the next morning, and then the next, getting worse and staying longer each day.

After the swelling started, I developed excruciating pain in my left hand, specifically in the thumb and first finger.  It was most painful when I was sleeping, so I woke often in the night because of the pain, no matter how I held my hand as I slept.  Once I woke up and moved it to get some blood flowing, the pain lessened a little, but not totally.  Even during the day, I couldn't grasp anything with those fingers at the risk of having pain and tremors shoot down my fingers and arm.

In my right hand, the same swelling, but slightly different symptoms.  My fingertips started to go numb while I slept, then my whole hand, and eventually my whole arm.  Again, when I woke up and moved it went away at first, but after a few days it stayed permanently, to some degree.  If my hand was relaxed, the fingertips were numb, but if I held it up for more than a few seconds - for example, to shampoo my hair in the shower - the whole hand went numb.  Not as painful as the other hand, but worrisome none the less.

I saw my OB for the first time last week, and he told me that because of the swelling, I have developed Carpal Tunnel in both of my wrists - unpleasant, but not totally uncommon in pregnancy.

Apparently the carpal tunnel is a part of the wrist that tendons and a nerve travel through to the fingers.  So, because of the swelling, the tendons and nerve in my wrists are being swished, causing pain and numbness.

I started to research carpal tunnel syndrome at home,  but just like my doctor told me, there's not much that can be done.  In extreme cases, surgery is the only answer, but since mine is caused by pregnancy swelling, it will go away after the pregnancy.

So in the meantime, I needed to find a way to reduce the swelling in order to get rid of some of the pain.  I started doing some research about what a person can do to reduce swelling.  I thought there might be some miracle fruit that you could eat, or a fancy herbal remedy or something.

Turns out, the answer was even more simple, and something I already knew, but didn't think about.  Drink more water.  And avoid things that decrease the amount of water in your body, like caffeine and sodium.  I'm not too bad with the caffeine - a coffee or tea about once a week - but I thought about all the sodium I was consuming, and it was pretty appalling.  We'd eaten out a few times recently, and I had been eating fries and gravy, and at home I snacked on chips and crackers.  It is recommended that people with swelling issues try to limit their sodium intake to 1000mg a day.  Even the things that I thought were safe, like my Raisin Bran cereal, had 350mg in a serving!  And as for my water intake, well there were days that I drank no water, and just milk or juice or coffee.

So starting yesterday, I decided to challenge myself to drink 2 liters of water a day (which is probably still not enough, but a huge increase for me), and to consider my sodium intake.  It would be too daunting to try to cut it out, but I checked the sodium content of everything I ate, and skipped things that seemed unreasonable - like the Raisin Bran.  I decided to commit to this for one week, and then see if it had made a difference at all.

Yesterday was only day one, but today I feel a million times better than I have in weeks!  The biggest difference was that I got a good night's sleep last night, which made a huge difference in my general wellbeing today.  I was a little less swollen last night, so I slept a little better.  Granted, I had to get up to pee more, but  I wasn't in as much pain, so I had an easier time falling back asleep, whereas in previous nights it would sometimes take hours.

All in all, water seems to be the miracle cure.  I'll have to see how the rest of my week goes, but I think I might be onto something here!