Pregnancy And High Altitude Travel

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All pregnant women are curious about what is safe for them during pregnancy and what isn't. Getting pregnant changes your entire life. You cannot do some of the most basic things like taking the stairs or riding bumping cars when you are pregnant.

IS DRIVING DURING PREGNANCY A SAFE OPTION?

Travel in general and movement in specific is obstructed during pregnancy. Did you know about the curious relationship between pregnancy and high altitude? If you feel like having a high altitude vacation during your pregnancy, should you go ahead with it?

Pregnancy At High Altitude Risks
If scientific facts are to be believed, then travelling to mountains during pregnancy is not safe. There is one very simple reason for this; the air gets thinner as you climb higher into the atmosphere. So you get less oxygen at high altitudes. This means you will get tired easily as less oxygen will go to your brain. It also means that your foetus will get less oxygen and that will affect its growth and development. Besides, pregnancy makes you breathless anyway. So being at high altitude will obviously make you go out of breath.

There are also minor issues like high altitude sickness that affect pregnant women. If you already have high altitude sickness, then pregnancy will make it worse. You might feel light headed, dizzy or nauseous depending on how you fare at higher altitudes normally. Although this does not affect your baby in a major way, it is uncomfortable.

Is It Really Risky?
This brings us to the next obvious question. If you are a pregnant woman and you are not supposed to have a vacation in hilly areas, what about women who live at high altitudes? So to counter that fact, we have another statistic. It has been noted that women who live at high altitudes have smaller babies. In fact, doctors have their own charts to measure the growth and development of babies who are born at high altitudes.

Eventually, it also comes down to your personal tolerance level. At 11,000 feet, some women don't even heave. However, some women huff and puff when they are just at 9000 feet. So your individual reaction to higher altitudes is a deciding factor here.