“What was that?!”
“Are you okay?”
“What broke?”
These are questions my husband asks me on a daily basis. I am so incredibly clumsy during my second pregnancy. I’m literally becoming a bull in a china shop. After blaming my clumsiness on being pregnant and my husband denying that was true, I consulted Dr. Google. I discovered that clumsiness is in fact a side effect of pregnancy. It even has a name: Pregnancy-induced clumsiness or PIC. I win!
All of my “whoops” moments now make sense. Here’s what I found out about PIC:
Pregnancy throws off your center of gravity. There is an obvious change that occurs in body size and the alteration of the center of gravity. Spinal lordosis (sway back) is a natural mechanism that helps a woman carry her enlarging abdomen without falling over. Still, her balance is uneasy. Luckily I don’t really fall over, but this causes me to drop things quite a bit.
Your joints and ligaments are loosening. The placenta secretes a hormone called “relaxin” which relaxes the ligaments in the body. It also loosens the joints of the hands, arms, ankles and knees. I swear my grip has gotten looser and this totally proves it.
Fatigue throws you off. I’m past the first trimester sleepiness, but I definitely still find myself sluggish at the end of the day. The more tired I am, the more likely I am to over pour my daughter’s milk and then drop the entire gallon all over the kitchen floor. That was fun to clean up.
“Pregnancy brain” is a real thing, too. In a recent issue of Science Journal, stress was shown to activate an enzyme in the brain which impairs short-term memory and impairs decision making. This makes me feel better about the zillion things I forget on a daily basis.
While I can’t cure myself of PIC, I can make it a little better by slowing down, which is difficult for me to do. The slower I go, the less likely I am to break something.
Were you clumsy during your pregnancy? How did you handle it?
