Pregnancy Beauty Tips
Pregnancy is a beautiful thing, but Sarah Balsley of Halifax says she certainly didn’t feel lovely during her pregnancy with her son Riley, 2. “My straight hair went curly, but only on one side of my head. It looked like I had gotten my hair permed but they’d forgotten to do the other side. And I grew a fluid-filled sack that rather resembled a tiny testicle stuck on the side of my left leg,” says Balsley. “I did not feel pretty.”
There is no doubt that most pregnant women do have a certain glow during pregnancy. Sadly, it doesn’t last the entire nine months. “Thanks to surging hormones, pretty much everyone who gets pregnant will see some kind of change to their skin, hair or nails,” says Toronto dermatologist Dr. Benjamin Barankin. “That glow we talk about may only be present for a few weeks.”
the skin you're in
During pregnancy your skin can change in a number of worrisome ways. Up to 90 percent of women suffer from pigmentation changes, which can leave dark areas on your face, neck and already heavily pigmented areas (such as nippls). The scientific term for this condition is melasma, or the “mask of pregnancy.”
“If you are Asian or Hispanic or someone in your family had issues with pigmentation, then you are at higher risk of developing melasma,” says Dr. Barankin. “But as this is caused by higher estrogen levels reacting with sunlight, you can protect yourself by wearing sunscreen with an SPF of 45 or higher, and by wearing a good hat to protect your face.”
If you do develop melasma, don’t panic, as the dark patches usually fade after the pregnancy, and if they don’t disappear completely they can be treated with prescription bleaching creams.
Skin tags, which can appear everywhere from eyelids to under the arms, and all other strange lumps and bumps, like Balsley’s “tiny testicle,” will fall off after you give birth, says Dr. Barankin. Or, as in Balsley’s case, the doctor will wait to see if it falls off by itself after birth, and if not, remove it. “These bumps that develop as a result of pregnancy are rarely cancerous, but if you have a visible growth that really bothers you, have it examined by a dermatologist to determine what it is and if it can be removed under local anesthetic. These problems are really common and there are lots of pregnancy-safe treatments we can recommend.”
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