Backwoods Wife

Pregnancy & migraine relief

This pregnancy has been a little rougher than usual in the headache department. With each of my other full term pregnancies I had only 1 or 2 migraines throughout the duration of the pregnancy. This time around I have had 3 migraines within 2 weeks. That's not happy math for me. At all. Basically you just have to tough it out. Much easier said than done with a 2 1/2 year old running around and a 9 month old to care for. However, I have found some relief from an unexpected source - vitamin B2.

After the first migraine lasted 3 days I contacted my midwives to see if they had any suggestions. They told me that the 15-16 week window is the worst time in pregnancy for headaches. They spoke with one of the doctors who suggested a prescription dose of vitamin B2 (also known as riboflavin) for headache prevention and decreased intensity of headache. It works. The second headache occurred only a day or so after I started taking the vitamin B2. It lasted only 2 days and wasn't nearly as severe. The next headache didn't occur for another week or so and it only lasted 1 day. Hooray!

Here's hoping that migraine #3 was the last one!!!

Another friend and fellow migraine sufferer suggested chai tea to me the other day. She had been teaching in a 3rd world country and didn't have access to her usual migraine medications but found chai tea to be very helpful.

Does anyone else have any non-medicinal suggestions?

Migraine home remedies? ~ Update

The past day or so I have had the worst migraine. Hence the lack of blogging. I can't take any of the regular migraine medication because of still breastfeeding our 6 month old. I'm left with ibuprofen which ever so slightly dulls the headache.

Any safe or natural suggestions out there?

I'm thankful I haven't had many migraines over the past couple of years as being pregnant seems to be a temporary cure for me, but it is so difficult to have a migraine and look after little ones. Normally once I go to bed for the night I sleep soundly for the duration but for some reason my body woke me up at 4 a.m. and I'm having trouble falling back to sleep. At this point I'm willing to try just about anything.

Shortly after I woke up this morning with the same migraine it started to rain. Within about half and hour of the rain, my headache was gone. I didn't realise that there was rain in the forecast. I can predict the weather by my migraines, but seeing as it has been so long since I've had one I'd forgotten about the only useful part of having a migraine.

Please see the comments section of this post for some reader suggestions. Thanks! :)