6 Top Tips for Cooling Pregnancy Heartburn

Jennifer Bright
Mon, 28 Jun 2021 21:00:00 -0700
Lifestyle

Even women whose only prior experience with heartburn is those old TV commercials (How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S) might experience heartburn during pregnancy. Nearly a quarter of pregnant women get heartburn during their first trimesters. At least half of women will have it sometime during pregnancy. Heartburn can begin at any point in pregnancy, and it sometimes becomes more severe toward the end of pregnancy.

Heartburn is very aptly named: It feels like a burning sensation in the middle of your chest. You might also have an acid or bitter taste in your mouth.
Updated: Tue Jun 29, 2021

Even women whose only prior experience with heartburn is those old TV commercials (How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S) might experience heartburn during pregnancy. Nearly a quarter of pregnant women get heartburn during their first trimesters. At least half of women will have it sometime during pregnancy. Heartburn can begin at any point in pregnancy, and it sometimes becomes more severe toward the end of pregnancy.

Heartburn is very aptly named: It feels like a burning sensation in the middle of your chest. You might also have an acid or bitter taste in your mouth.

What causes pregnancy heartburn? Even though you're eating for two, higher levels of the hormone progesterone during pregnancy slow down digestion. Plus, your uterus is crowding other organs in your abdomen. As your pregnancy goes along, your baby presses on your digestive tract.

Here's what our Mommy M.D.s — doctors who are also mothers — do to alleviate their own pregnancy heartburn.

"During one pregnancy, I had really bad heartburn," says Elissa Charbonneau, D.O., a mom of a son and a daughter and the medical director of the New England Rehabilitation Hospital in Portland, Maine. "Lying with my upper body propped up on pillows helped. Drinking ice water also eased the heartburn."

"During my second pregnancy, I had a lot of heartburn," says Erika Schwartz, M.D., a mom of two and the director of Evolved Science medical practice. Schwartz has been in private practice for more than 30 years in New York City, specializing in women's health, disease prevention and bioidentical hormones. "All I could eat were white foods, such as potatoes, toast and eggs."

"During my pregnancy, I had a lot of nausea and heartburn," says Jennifer Kim, M.D., a mom of three girls and an OB-GYN in private practice in Evanston, Illinois, at the Midwest Center for Women's HealthCare. "I found it helped if I didn't eat too much at once. Also, I tried not to drink too much at once because too much liquid in my stomach made me nauseated. I usually love pasta with tomato sauce, but I had to avoid it when I was pregnant. Finally, around week 19, the nausea and heartburn went away, and I was able to eat and drink more normally."

"I never had heartburn in my life until I was pregnant," says Rallie McAllister, M.D., M.P.H., mom of three, co-author of "The Mommy MD Guide to Your Baby's First Year," nationally recognized health expert and family physician in Lexington, Kentucky. "I tried to control it with dietary changes, but that was difficult because I was starving all of the time. Eating a huge amount of food made the heartburn worse, pushing the food and acids back up into my esophagus, which causes burning and pain. I still ate a lot, but I made myself eat smaller meals, even breaking up one meal into three minimeals. I certainly wasn't denying myself any calories! I discovered that drinking soft drinks helped my nausea, but it made my heartburn worse. Anything with bubbles seemed to stir things up, and at one point, I had to swear off even clear sodas like ginger ale."

"During my first pregnancy, I had heartburn, but I could manage it by changing position and sleeping more upright," says Sadaf T. Bhutta, M.D., a mom of a daughter and triplets and an assistant professor and the fellowship director of pediatric radiology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children's Hospital, both in Little Rock. "Sometimes simply turning to my right side would make it better. But when I was pregnant with triplets, I had terrible, unrelenting heartburn. Each night, it would wake me around 1 a.m., even if I last ate at 7 p.m."

"My doctor suggested I take over-the-counter Pepcid," Bhutta adds. (Talk with your doctor or midwife before taking this or any medication.) I also discovered that eating ice cream and sipping a little milk helped. So, I coated that heartburn with some ice cream!"

When to Call Your Doctor or Midwife

If your heartburn is so severe that you can't eat or sleep, call your doctor or midwife the next business day. You might need to control it with medication.

Jennifer Bright is a mom of four sons, co-founder and CEO of family- and veteran- owned custom publisher Momosa Publishing, co-founder of the Mommy MD Guides team of 150+ mommy M.D.s, and co-author of "The Mommy MD Guide to the Toddler Years." She lives in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. To find out more about Jennifer Bright and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.