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The Traveling (and Pregnant) Life
On the Road While Expecting
By Lisa A. Goldstein
How do you manage if your job requires travel and you're pregnant? Read on to hear what experts doctors and women who have firsthand experience with this topic have to say about staying comfortable and prepared while on the road.
The first trimester of pregnancy carries the highest risk of miscarriage and the third trimester has the highest risk of preterm labor. "Therefore, the middle trimester is considered the safe zone," says Dr. Michael Zimring, director of The Center for Wilderness and Travel Medicine at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, Md., and the author of Healthy Travel (Basic Health Publishing, 2005). "I would say that a person should not travel a distance or to a developing country the last month of the pregnancy."
Another physician at Mercy, Dr. Terry Hoffman, who is an OB/GYN, says she allows her uncomplicated patients to travel up to 37 weeks. She sees them the week before they leave, checks their cervix making sure they're not dilated any significant amount and gives them a copy of their medical records, just in case. If there are any high-risk factors, such as hypertension, diabetes, pre-eclampsia in a prior pregnancy or preterm labor, that might change.
Dr. Hoffman tells her patients not to get on the plane if they are contracting, and if they are after 36 weeks, not to have sex while they're away as this could cause contractions.
One travel risk to be aware of is deep vein thrombus (DVT) if you sit for prolonged periods and/or if you're dehydrated such as when traveling by plane since airplanes have extremely low humidity, Dr. Zimring says. He recommends keeping hydrated and moving around to avoid a DVT. Hydration is also essential to keep up placental blood flow, he says.
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