The monsoon’s effect on pregnancy

This article is authored by Dr Richika Sahay Shukla, co-founder and medical director, India IVF.

The monsoon is romantic when you're watching it from a window with a cup of chai. It feels quite different when you're carrying a baby through it. The reassuring part first: Monsoon weather does not, on its own, harm a healthy pregnancy. But it can chip away at a mother's day-to-day comfort, and comfort matters far more than we give it credit for. A woman who is sleeping badly, feeling bloated, and stuck indoors for weeks isn't just uncomfortable. She's more tired, more anxious, and less able to enjoy a phase of life that deserves to be enjoyed.

Pregnancy (Representational image). (Unsplash)

Start with the humidity, because that is what most women complain about first. Pregnancy already raises body temperature and blood volume. Add air that refuses to absorb sweat, and the body loses one of its main cooling mechanisms. The result is that heavy, damp, permanently uncomfortable feeling women describe as being unable to dry off. It also worsens swelling in the feet and ankles, particularly in the third trimester. Elevating the legs for a few minutes several times a day helps more than doing it once for an hour. So does moving. Long, still hours at a desk or on a sofa are what let fluid settle.

Then there's the hydration trap. Nobody feels thirsty in the rain. The weather is cool, the sweating is less obvious because it isn't evaporating, and water intake quietly drops. I see this constantly in July and August: women who were drinking well through the summer are suddenly dehydrated without realising it, and they arrive complaining of headaches, constipation, and Braxton Hicks contractions that have become more frequent. Thirst is not a reliable signal in a pregnant body during the monsoon. Drink to a schedule, not to a sensation.

Damp also brings fungal and skin trouble, which women are often too embarrassed to mention until I ask directly. Warm folds of skin, wet clothes, footwear that never quite dries. Change out of anything damp promptly, choose cotton, and dry the skin properly rather than just towelling over it. Urinary tract infections are more common in pregnancy in any season, and they should never be waited out. If it burns, it needs treating.

The one risk I worry about most is also the most mundane: Falls. Wet marble, slick lobby tiles, a puddle on an unlit staircase. A pregnant woman's centre of gravity has shifted, her ligaments are looser, and she often cannot see her own feet. A single slip can undo a completely uneventful pregnancy. Sensible, gripping footwear is not a small thing during these months. Neither is asking someone to hold your arm on the stairs, however unnecessary it feels.

The part that gets discussed least is the mood. Grey weeks indoors, cancelled walks, a body that already feels unlike your own. Many of my patients feel low in the monsoon and assume they are being ungrateful. They are not. Movement and light both drop sharply, and both affect how you feel. Walk in the corridor or the hall if the road is flooded. Sit by a window in the mornings. Keep the appointments, keep the conversations, and say it out loud if the low mood persists rather than filing it under weather.

None of this requires a dramatic change to how you live. It requires paying slightly more attention for a few months, in a season that quietly asks more of a pregnant body than it lets on. The rain will pass. The habit of noticing what your body is telling you is worth keeping long after it does.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Dr Richika Sahay Shukla, co-founder and medical director, India IVF.