Introduction
Stomach pain during pregnancy can have many different causes. In order to determine the origin and extent of the pain accurately, a doctor should always be consulted if the pain persists for a long time.
Harmless pregnancy-related stomach pain
Stomach pains can have various harmless causes during pregnancy, which can be easily remedied by a change in diet or a change of position: These symptoms often improve when the diet is adapted to the new condition and one pays attention to easily digestible food and does not eat too large meals.
- Due to the change in hormone balance during this time, the female body undergoes some changes. Due to the progesterone, for example, the muscles of the digestive tract slacken.
- This is aggravated by a change in the production of enzymes from the stomach and gall bladder that are necessary for digestion.
As a result, some pregnant women may experience abdominal pain, often accompanied by a feeling of heaviness or fullness and sometimes heartburn or flatulence.
Stomach pain during pregnancy can have many different causes, although these are harmless in most cases as written above and are based on normal changes during pregnancy. Especially stomach pain in early pregnancy, provided it occurs alone without further major complaints or symptoms, often has the hormonal changes in the body as its cause, so that it is a normal adaptation to the exceptional physical situation. At the beginning of pregnancy, the body produces many more hormones than before, for example the pregnancy-maintaining hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), as well as an increased amount of progesterone.
Progesterone in particular causes the smooth muscles of the gastrointestinal tract in the female body to relax during pregnancy, making it generally slower. This can therefore lead to a feeling of fullness, heaviness, a slower passage of food through the stomach and intestines (i.e. slower digestion), flatulence, constipation and thus to stomach pain. In addition, the hormone progesterone causes an increased production of digestive enzymes and bile, and the slackening of the gastrointestinal muscles also contributes to the fact that the stomach entrance, which normally prevents acid gastric juice from rising into the esophagus, may not close as well and heartburn may occur. In contrast, stomach pain in advanced pregnancy is often more likely to occur due to a lack of space in the abdominal area, with the steadily growing uterus displacing other organs as the child grows, thus also constricting the intestine and stomach. In contrast, stomach pain in advanced pregnancy is often more likely to occur due to lack of space in the abdominal area, with the steadily growing uterus displacing other organs with the growing child, thus constricting the intestine and stomach.
