Pregnancy and Restless Legs

Pregnancy brings on a lot of different and interesting changes. Some changes are well known and you can prepare yourself for them and some seem to come out of left field.

One of the early symptoms I had with all of my pregnancies was restless legs. It is not one of the most common or well known symptoms but it was one of the early ones for me. Every night when I tried to go to bed I got this awful feeling in my legs – like crawling and my legs would always need to move.

Restless legs made sleeping pretty uncomfortable for both myself and my husband. I would toss and turn and kick the blankets and groan and grumble. Nothing seemed to make this feeling go away! Add in the strange dreams with the restless legs and that left me a very tired pregnant mama!

The only thing that I found helped me sleep at night was to take a warm bath just before bed. Soak my legs in the warm water and try to let go of all the anxiety I may have had build up over the day.

On top of the warm bath, I also found that sleeping with a fan on in the room, blowing at my legs helped me keep the restlessness at bay and I was eventually able to fall asleep. My sweet and understanding husband would need to use 2 blankets at night because not only was I sleeping with the fan on but i also had the window wide open – in the winter, in Canada. I found the cold air on my body kept the restless feelings at bay and I was not waking up from my legs needing to kick.

The restless legs went away in the second trimester for me and it was amazing. My husband was not freezing at night and I was not needing to do a whole ritual to ensure i was going to get a good night sleep.

Unfortunately the restless legs came back in full force when the third trimester hit and lasted then until the day after the baby was born. It was certainly a pregnancy symptom I do not miss!

:: Did you suffer from restless legs when you were pregnant? What allowed you to get to sleep at night? ::

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