Medical Questions & Answers

Facing Up to Your Changing Skin During Pregnancy

Pregnancy is the most beautiful time in your life. It is a time when you feel extra special and the knowledge of a life growing within you makes you beam with joy. You bloom like never before. And as you edge towards the sixteenth week of pregnancy you observe yourself getting bigger each day. It’s something you can’t very well help noticing. And it’s terribly exciting. But excitement apart, you also tend to observe a lot of skin changes and that makes you feel a little low.

Pigmentation

If you stand naked in front of the mirror and examine yourself carefully, you’ll find that certain parts of your body have become
darker: the area surrounding the nipples known as the areola, the vulva, the perianal region, and the line down the middle of your abdomen. This strip is normally a little paler than the rest of your skin and is known as the linea alba or white line. During pregnancy however, it darkens and becomes known as the linea nigra, or dark line. This darkening, or pigmentation, of the skin occurs in varying degrees in almost all women who become pregnant. A few women develop a patch, cafe au lait, pigmentation across the forehead, cheeks and upper lip. This is known as the mask of pregnancy. Of course you can always disguise it with cosmetics, but that shouldn’t often be necessary.

Freckles and Moles

Freckles and pigmented moles commonly enlarge and darken too, during pregnancy. But there is no need to worry. These pigmented moles always regress to their original state after delivery.

Dark Shadows

During pregnancy some expectant mothers are plagued with the problem of under-eye circles. This could be due to several reasons. It could be because of fatigue or lack of sleep due to discomfort or even elevated hormone levels causing capillaries to become engorged, making them appear darker, particularly, under the eyes, where the skin is thin.

To get rid of dark circles, to begin with, you could try and catch up on your sleep during the day or whenever possible. It also helps to put slices of cucumber on your eyes for about half-an-hour to make them relaxed.

Oily and Dry Skin

Although pregnancy affects every woman’s skin differently, hormone fluctuations can cause breakouts and make skin oily or dry. If your skin is normal and becomes dry, you might need to stop using an astringent, which can dehydrate your skin. If there is an increase in oil production you should switch to a lighter moisturiser. You should reevaluate your daily skin-care routine early on after conception. If acne outbreaks take you by surprise or if your skin is reacting differently to your make-up, consider seeing a dermatologist and make sure she knows you are pregnant.

Dry skin is again a common skin-problem during pregnancy. It needs plenty of moisturising as well as thorough cleansing after removing make-up. The most important effect of moisturisers on dry skin is to seal in the skin’s natural lubricants. For this reason they are best avoided on oily skins.

Both oily and dry skin can benefit from a stimulating rub to remove dead surface cells and expose the fresh cells underneath. Known as exfoliation, this process helps dispel flaking, dry skin, unblocks pores and generally stimulates circulation, thus nourishing the skin.

Stretch Marks

The skin changes that can upset you most are the dreaded stretch marks or striae gravidarum as they are called, which may make their appearance across the lower abdomen from the twenty-fourth week.

Unfortunately in most women they’re not always confined to the abdomen and may occur on the breasts, the thighs, and on the buttocks too. Stretch marks tend to affect women whose abdominal skin has been subjected to much stretching caused by, for example, twin pregnancy, excessive fluid retention, or simply a very large baby. But that isn’t the whole story because some women with enormously distended abdomens never develop stretch marks at all. It is now believed that striae are caused, not so much by the actual stretching of the skin, as by certain hormones released in pregnancy which act on elastic fibres beneath the skin. It has been found for instance, that women with really noticeable stretch marks are more likely to develop toxaemia—retention of fluid, urinary changes, raised blood pressure— later on in their pregnancy, than women who have never been troubled at all.

Chances are you’ll be one of the lucky ones who just won’t happen to form stretch marks. But just in case you do, here’s some news to cheer you up. These ugly marks always—yes, always—fade to a much lighter color after delivery. Also post delivery massages and lavish application of vitamin E fortified creams help to lighten them.

Itching

There are two other skin conditions worth mentioning which occur in pregnancy and at no other time. One of these is herpes
gestationis, an itchy red eruption which appears in the later stages of pregnancy. This is a rare occurrence and the chances of your suffering from it, or your baby being affected by it, are almost negligible.

The other condition is pregnancy itching or pruritus gravidarum itching, which usually makes its appearance in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy. There is no rash, but the skin all over the body is intensely itchy and you feel you want to scratch, scratch, scratch all the time. Fortunately the itching disappears after delivery and—most important of all—it doesn’t seem to have any effect whatsoever on the baby.

Most of these skin changes discussed above are temporary and will generally disappear after delivery. Therefore, they should not give you sleepless nights. In fact, you do need your beauty sleep too, to feel as beautiful as never before and enjoy the joys of motherhood!

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