Are You At Risk For Supine Hypotensive Syndrome?

During any pregnancy there are a few things you can guarantee, gaining weight, difficulty sleeping and of course, some serious cravings. Your doctor may screen you for various tests throughout benchmarks of those nine months such as your sugar levels, your blood pressure, preeclampsia, your blood type and even what type of cervix you may have. One condition that millions of women are unaware of that terribly needs attention, is a condition called “Supine Hypertensive Syndrome”.

This disorder is rather personal to me, as I have experienced it and I can attest that it is an extremely frightening ordeal. SHS occurs when a woman is pregnant, generally in the second and third trimesters when the baby has really begun to gain some size. That size makes the uterus heavy and just in between the uterus and the spine is a main artery that permits blood flow directly to the brain of the mother. When that woman lies flat on her back, the weight of the baby in the uterus pushes down on the artery essentially closing off all blood supply to the brain and as a result, the pregnant woman loses consciousness. While in some cases, this may just be a basic fainting spell that lasts under a minute, the woman awakes and realizes she can’t lay flat on her back anymore and all is well, right? Well, in my experience this simply was not the case.

I went to the hospital at 34 weeks pregnant, as a result of experiencing contractions for a few hours. Upon arriving there, they placed me into my room and the first thing they wanted to do was to check my cervix to grasp where I had dilated to. As I laid on my back for the nurse to check me, within twenty seconds I felt as if I was going to faint. Apparently, I did more than just faint. I passed out after being laid on my back in under one minute and was unconscious for quite some time. My body went into having a seizure, lips were blue all of it. When I awoke there where around ten staff members hovering over me sticking IV’s into my arms and I was being given oxygen, all the while I had no idea what had just happened. Had I not been in the hospital during this episode it could have been a frightening result.

I am well aware of how frustrating pregnancy can be, how challenging it is to carry a baby all that time and how annoying it is to find a good sleeping position. If there is one thing I will encourage all pregnant women not to ever do, is to sleep while laying flat on their backs. This can be very dangerous and you can potentially prevent this syndrome from happening to you just by positioning yourself on your side, or at the least by turning your hips.