Pregnancy is always exciting an exciting time. However, many women are quite scared when they begin to notice unusual changes to their vision in the course of their pregnancy. Certainly, you may be wondering if factually, your pregnancy can cause distortions to your eyesight. The answer is yes: your pregnancy would affect your vision.

In fact, it is relatively common to see pregnant women noticing changes to their eyesight in the course of their pregnancy. More than 15% of pregnant women globally mark changes to the way they see once they conceive and as the gestation period occurs. The change in vision can be seen as a by-product of changes in the pregnant woman’s hormonal levels, their blood circulation, the way their body retains fluids and their general metabolic process.

Delving further, for example, the likelihood is significantly higher that pregnant women undergo changes in the capacity to retain water. On the longer run, such distortions in water retention capacity could go on to trigger increases in the thickness of your cornea, thereby altering its curvature. Of course, with such changes to your cornea, you would expect that your vision would be affected as well. Let us further examine some of these changes in vision during your pregnancy.

Dryness and irritation

During your pregnancy, your eyes become more susceptible to dryness. In other cases, you would be battling eye irritations even up through your breastfeeding period. Most of these are prompted by the aforementioned adjustment in your cornea. It wouldn’t always help to wear contact lenses to solve this.

You could suffer eye disease

A hefty number of pregnant woman have been reported to suffer a distinct eye disease termed central serous chorioretinopathy. With this disease, there is a buildup of fluid under your retina. In face of this buildup, the layers of your retina suffer detachment. This would, in turn, create blind spots as well as generally distorting your overall vision. In most circumstances, this eye disease is strongly connected to stress hormones. Such eye disease is common during the second trimester.

Visual disturbances from migraines

It is also possible that in course of your pregnancy, you could be struggling with blind spots otherwise known as flashing lights. This is most likely the result from a condition termed migraine headache with aura. This condition is common among pregnant women. In such circumstances, you could suffer severe headaches which often manifest one side of your head. This is often followed by aura. Visual disturbances come with this as well. You could be seeing notably radiant flashes of light and even zigzag lines. In the worst cases, you could experience temporary blindness.

However, vision changes during pregnancy shouldn’t be too alarming. Naturally, such changes are short-lived and eventually revert to their normal conditions after delivery. In most cases, such reversal in your eyesight (to its normal state) comes over months. Therefore, it is not advisable to become overly focussed on corrective eye surgeries. Whatever the case, you should continue to see your eye doctor during your pregnancy to mitigate any extenuating circumstances.