Headaches in Pregnancy

Headaches in pregnancy suck. Not least because there isn’t much you can take for them.
I have actually suffered from headaches all my life and have has numerous MRI scans, alternative therapies, tried countless different prescriptions, seen dozens of specialists – and all to no avail – infact anything you could suggest I can guarantee I have tried!
I used to pay a lot of money to see a top neurologists in London (when I lived there) and In Sydney to try and get to the bottom of them and after 2 years of seeing someone in Sydney and after a lot of trial and error treatments he said ‘ the truth is we only understand about 10% of the reasons why people get headaches”. Good one.
So a few years back I stopped seeing all the specialists and instead looked at the hormonal link and started using Progesterone cream on my skin every day (just a little bit rubbed on my arm) and although it didn’t stop them I went from having one every day to having one 7 days in one month – so a big improvement.
But the hormonal link was confirmed to me in my first pregnancy when in my first trimester I hardly had any headaches then boom in my second one they were thick, fast and every day and were very debilitating. Then in my last trimester I had 3 horrific migraine attacks where I had to be hospitalised – they were so bad I couldn’t speak, blacked out and had no idea where I was and the pain – well WOW.
The only thing that could be done was having pethadine injected which I can still remember the absolute relief lying in the hospital bed when the pethadine kicked in and I got my faculties back and the pain stopped.  Luckily the neurologist and Dr assured me the issues were not effecting my baby and it was all chemical reactions in my head to the hormone levels which were now doing effective sommersaults in my body.
I write this now as I am now in my second trimester and the morning sickness from the first few months has now been replaced by the daily and horrible headache. To be honest I hate even taking panadol – and there is evidence that even that isn’t safe in pregnancy (you can read it here) but the pain is shocking so I have to take it on some days. And most days now you will see me with frozen peas strapped to my head as the coldness seems to numb the pain.
Ahh the joys of pregnancy and I have the 3rd trimester to still look forward to 🙂  But I must say if my next baby is half as cute as mu gorgeous little monkey then I will be happy. But it does make me laugh that we all forget the pain/uncomfortableness we suffer in pregnancy as the joys of our baby surpasses any pain – as I had clean forgot about how bad my headaches were the first time around!
And on that note I am off to get some frozen peas – and to any mums experiencing pregnancy headaches too I can thoroughly recommend anything frozen to help take the pain away!