A Woman's Guide to Pregnancy Preeclampsia

A potentially fatal condition, preeclampsia occurs when a woman's blood pressure spikes during pregnancy. Heightened levels of protein are also part of the onset of preeclampsia, which is detected in the urine. In most cases, preeclampsia only causes moderate rising in blood-pressure, but it must be treated to prevent it from becoming more severe. When preeclampsia isn't treated it can cause serious complications with your pregnancy, potentially becoming fatal for your baby and yourself.

Symptoms
The symptoms of preeclampsia are various and can also be indicative of other conditions. This makes it absolutely necessary to contact your physician or OB/GYN immediately if you are experiencing any of them after 20 weeks of pregnancy. These symptoms include:

High blood pressure
When you experience bouts of high blood pressure that occur frequently, preeclampsia can be apparent. Mayo Clinic states that more than two spikes in blood pressure every six hours should be reported to a medical professional.

Headaches
Frequent and severe migraine headaches often accompany high blood pressure. When this occurs frequently after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the headaches can be foretelling of a more serious issue.

Other Symptoms
Dizziness, blurred vision, nausea and slight dehydration are other symptoms to watch out for that indicate preeclampsia. In addition to these issues, you may also experience edema, which is the swelling of your face and extremities. However, edema occurs frequently in pregnancy so this symptom alone isn't a cause for concern.

Causes
Originally, preeclampsia was believed to have been caused by a toxin in pregnant women's bodies. This led to the inaccurate term of toxemia being applied to it. Modern science has determined that it isn't a toxin-related condition and is instead caused by a wide variety of factors. These causes include a lack of blood-flow to the uterus during pregnancy, blood vessel damage, a poor diet or immune system deficiencies.

Risk Factors
Pregnant women are the only people at risk for preeclampsia, and each pregnancy is different. This makes pinpointing the various risk factors involved. The known risks for preeclampsia include the following:

First Pregnancy
If this is your first pregnancy, you are at heightened risk of developing this condition. Mayo Clinic states that the risk is heightened each time you have a new child with a new partner.

Age
Preeclampsia occurs most frequently in women older than 40 and younger than 20 years of age.

Obesity
Being overweight already puts strain on your body, being overweight while pregnant heightens this strain and increases the chances of developing preeclampsia.

Preeclampsia is only cured by delivering the baby. If your pregnancy is too early for delivery of the child, arrangements must be made with your physician for taking care of yourself until it is safe to induce childbirth.