My Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

It has been a while since my last post on 3D/4D ultrasound scan. Now, I am on maternity leave until next three months. So, I have free time to write again for my blog. Actually, I wanted to write two months ago about my other experience of being pregnant – that is when I felt something wrong with my hands. Yes, it was some sort of a syndrome. I felt pain in my hands, especially my wrists. And the syndrome is called Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Although this syndrome is always associated with people whose jobs require repetitive hand movement (such as data processors, computer programmers, etc), it is also prevalent in pregnant women (http://www.babycenter.com).

I have searched information on it in internet. Tons of websites provide ample knowledge for me. http://www.mycarpaltunnel.com says that up to twenty percent of pregnant women will experience this debilitating syndrome at some point during their pregnancy. The most common symptoms are hand pain, hand numbness, tingling sensations in the fingers, hand and thumbs and pain shooting up the forearm. It can even translate to shoulder and neck pain following the nerve path back to the brain. Often these symptoms are most intense at night and result in routine sleep disturbance. Thank God, however, I have just felt pain in the wrists near the thumbs and it makes my hands difficult to hold objects tightly but I can sleep well at night.

Mr. Wikipedia says that the most common cause of CTS (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) is typing, but my job doesn’t require much typing. Recent literature suggests that sleep positioning, such as sleeping on one’s side, might be an associated factor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpal_tunnel_syndrome). For the latter reason, it might be true, as a pregnant woman is suggested to sleep on her left side.  So, this condition causes pressure on the median nerve at the wrist and leads to CTS.

I once consulted with my doctor, and she said that the symptoms usually would go away gradually after I gave birth. Hopefully.