Introduction
Insomnia during pregnancy is a very common symptom. It has numerous causes, which usually do not require treatment. To make matters worse, most medications that treat insomnia symptomatically are not approved for pregnant women. As a rule, either the insomnia improves on its own or alternative medical measures are sufficient to alleviate the symptoms.
Causes
There are numerous causes of insomnia during pregnancy, but most of them are harmless. Depending on when insomnia occurs during pregnancy, there can be different causes. At the beginning of a pregnancy (early pregnancy), a psychosomatic cause is often to be assumed in the case of newly occurring sleep disorders.
The new situation, the change of many habits, leads to an extraordinary strain on the woman. This can often keep the pregnant woman busy and not let her sleep. Furthermore, a newly occurring restlessness and insomnia can also be triggered by the hormonal changes taking place in the body.
Numerous messenger substances are now released in the body and can cause restlessness and insomnia. What should be considered is that in a pregnancy also the blood pressure can rise, which can lead also to sleep disturbances. The thyroid gland should also be checked.
Besides sweating and restlessness, hyperactivity also leads to problems falling asleep or sleeping through the night. As the pregnancy progresses, the position and pressure in the abdomen of pregnant women change. The size of the child can exert strong pressure on the pregnant woman’s blood vessels, which can lead to discomfort, especially at night. The symptom also known as “vena cava compression” usually occurs at night, as the pregnant woman lies on her back and the child puts pressure on the woman’s vena cava. Due to a short-term undersupply, the affected woman wakes up immediately and reflexively turns to the side, which causes the pressure to be removed from the vena cava and the blood supply to be restored.
Associated symptoms
Apart from the sleep disturbances in the pregnancy it can come also to some accompanying symptoms, which can give already references to the possible cause of the complaints. In both cases, the necessary regeneration time is not reached. The pregnant woman is unrested, over a longer period of time this can lead to consequences such as restlessness, irritability, concentration problems and even depression.
In addition to the sleep disorders, sweating, hair loss and trembling can also occur, which would indicate a thyroid dysfunction as a possible triggering cause. Appropriate further investigations should be scheduled here. Sleep disturbances with possible accompanying headaches can provide an indication that the cause is high blood pressure.
Furthermore, insomnia can be accompanied by severe mood swings. In this case depression can be excluded. Relatively often depressions of various degrees occur during pregnancy and can also lead to restlessness and insomnia.
Quite frequently, a nightly restlessness occurs during pregnancy. The reasons are varied and range from a psychosomatic component to serious hormonal or thyroid-related causes. Often the drastic experiences of a pregnancy are formative for a woman.
Both joy and worry can lead to anxiety that sometimes lasts throughout the entire pregnancy. In most cases, there are no other complaints and accompanying symptoms besides anxiety. Restlessness during the day and night with accompanying sweating, sometimes trembling, can be caused by hyperthyroidism.
In this case, an appropriate ultrasound examination and a blood test should be performed. Restlessness can also be caused by high blood pressure, which does not necessarily have to be particularly high but may differ from the usual blood pressure values. If the blood pressure is not lowered at night, this would lead to restlessness at night.
If the blood pressure values are raised both at night and during the day, this could result in permanent restlessness. Sometimes the blood pressure-related restlessness is also combined with headaches during the day or at night.With these symptoms, one should definitely consult a doctor, since increased blood pressure during pregnancy requires treatment. Restlessness is a very common symptom in pregnant and non-pregnant women. The causes should be clarified in order not to overlook any important and quickly remediable components.
