My Pregnancy Gave Me a Hiatal Hernia

A woman’s body goes through a lot of changes during pregnancy, most of which aren’t permanent and aren’t harmful. However, occasionally when all of the organs are rearranged later in the pregnancy, when the fetus has grown quite large and is taking up a lot of room, something can unexpected can happen. This happened to me during my first pregnancy, but I didn’t realize it until much later.

I had a difficult pregnancy. I was diagnosed as pre-ecamptic at about 6 months along. This means that my body wasn’t reacting well to the fetus and my blood pressure was increasing and I was retaining a lot of fluids. My weight shot up, I was dizzy and saw shooting silvery light in front of my eyes. I also started to get horrendous pain in my chest. I, and my doctor, just assumed it was due to the pre-ecampsia and the fact that everything in my abdomen was becoming squashed due to the expansion of the womb.

Luckily, I was allowed to take over the counter acid suppressing medicine, which I started chewing by the handful for relief. It worked for a while, but soon the indigestion, pressure and pain would return. I was miserable. During attacks, I’d have to stand up because sitting down or lying down would make it worse. These attacks would happen at anytime, day or night, before or after meals. It didn’t seem to matter what time of day or what I ate or drank. It wasn’t regular, like indigestion immediately after eating something, so there was no way to predict when it might occur.

Then, at about 34 weeks into my pregnancy, I was put into the hospital due to my extremely high blood pressure. The first night, I couldn’t sleep at all and tossed and turned, eating my over the counter tablets and drinking Mylanta straight from the bottle. My blood pressure increased even more and after an examination, the doctor said I was in danger of having a stroke, so they decided to perform an emergency caesarian section.

They started an epidural, which gave me relief from my acid reflux and the caesarian was done with no complications. My baby was delivered and I thought everything was all right. Then shortly afterwards, the burning sensations and pain started again. I basically ignored it, still taking the over the counter meds until years later I was at the doctor’s for a physical and mentioned my symptoms. He did a barium x-ray, which is where I drank a thick and disgusting solution laced with barium, a tracer chemical that shows up on x-rays. As I swallowed, they took x-rays and it showed I had a hiatal hernia; a section of my stomach that had pushed into my diaphragm. They believed it was caused by the pregnancy when I first started to exhibit symptoms. I was started on prescription proton pump inhibitors and they worked incredibly well. Now all I have to do is take a pill every morning before I eat and I’m set for the day. Since they haven’t perfected a surgical solution yet, I will need to keep on my medication. But I don’t mind, it’s better than suffering.