What should I do if my belly swells during my fourth month of pregnancy?

Pregnancy is supposed to be a very happy thing because expectant mothers will become mothers in a few months and will see their beloved babies. However, when expectant mothers find that their stomachs are bloated when they are 4 months pregnant, they will become worried. So what causes this? What are the medical explanations and treatments for this? Let’s read the following text to find out what causes belly bloating when you are four months pregnant and what you should do.

There are many reasons for abdominal bloating during pregnancy. The production of progesterone will relax the smooth muscles of the gastrointestinal tract and weaken peristalsis, making it easy for the acidic gastric contents to reflux to the lower esophagus. In addition, the time for gastric emptying is prolonged. When food stays in the intestines for a longer time, it will spoil and ferment under the action of bacteria, which will produce a large amount of gas, causing pregnant women to feel full.

During pregnancy, due to hormonal changes in the body, the secretion of progesterone becomes significantly more active. Although this hormone can inhibit the contraction of uterine muscles to prevent miscarriage, it will also slow down the body's intestinal motility; causing not only morning sickness, nausea, vomiting, and gastric acid reflux into the esophagus in the early stages of pregnancy, but also constipation, which in turn causes discomfort in the entire gastrointestinal tract.

Eat small, frequent meals to help your stomach digest food faster. To effectively relieve bloating, you must start with diet. If a pregnant woman eats a lot of food when she feels bloated, it will increase the burden on gastrointestinal digestion and make the bloating worse. Therefore, pregnant women may wish to change their habit of eating three meals a day to eating six to eight meals a day, with smaller portions at each meal. Be careful not to eat too many kinds of food at each meal, and don’t eat too liquid food, because liquid food is not necessarily easy to digest. On the contrary, pregnant women can choose to eat semi-solid foods such as oatmeal.

Drink more warm water - if stool accumulates in the large intestine, bloating will become more serious, so pregnant women should drink more warm water, at least 1500cc of water every day. Adequate water can promote bowel movements. It is better to drink warm water than cold water because drinking cold water is more likely to cause intestinal colic. In addition, it is better to drink less soda, coffee, tea and other beverages.

From the perspective of modern Chinese medicine, the bloating that occurs during pregnancy may not be directly related to the fetus. It is more likely to be caused by changes in eating habits. For example, eating a lot of tonic food during pregnancy may cause difficulty in digestion, or pregnant women may consume more foods that are easy to produce gas due to changes in taste.

Being pregnant for 4 months is very hard. If you are pregnant for 4 months, you must seek medical attention in time. If you cannot discover and find out the cause, you must listen to the doctor. This is not a joke. You must take it to heart and then have a baby. This is what we want to see.