Saturday, January 18, 2014

Air Travel and Pregnancy Tips

Air travel during pregnancy is never easy. A lot of precautionary measures have to be taken to ensure the comfort and safety of the expecting mother. Although air travel should be minimized as far as possible during the pregnancy, it should not curb the freedom of pregnant women to travel by air, whether for leisure or for work purposes. A few simple steps can easily be taken to ease the journey during the flight.

As far as seating for pregnant travelers is concerned, always request for bulkhead seat, which is the seat located just behind the bulkhead partition that separates the plane into economic class from business class. Most of the bulkhead seats provide more legroom. Keeping in mind that the pregnant uterus is pressing on the urinary bladder, the frequency of urination is expected to be increased as pregnancy progresses. Thus, an aisle seat behind bulkhead would be ideal and easy to move to the washroom. Sometimes, the washrooms would be made available just at the bulkhead section in certain airlines.

Swelling around the ankles and lower legs are common in pregnancy. These conditions can be made worse when flying in a long distance journey. Pregnancy has higher risk in developing varicose vein and deep vein thrombosis. Thus, it is advisable to remove the shoe and stocking when resting on the flight journey. Keep the blood circulation smooth by doing a few simple stretching exercises that can be carried out on the seat. It involves stretching both arms and shoulders, followed by stretching the legs and then rotate the feet. A bulkhead seat would certainly be more spacious and convenient for this purpose.

Strolling along the aisle every hour is helpful especially in long distance air travel. Together with the stretching exercise, the pregnant travelers should feel more relax and less numbness around lower limbs due to poor blood circulation.

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