“Bed rest” are two words no pregnant woman wants to hear. If your doctor advises you to spend most of your pregnancy off your feet, it usually means the pregnancy is at risk from reaching full term because of a variety of reasons. “Depending on the patient’s condition, bed rest can be either full or partial,” says Dr. Heidy Dy-Fernandez, an obstetrician-gynecologist at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City. “Partial bed rest means the patient can still join her family during meals or walk to the bathroom to take a shower. On the other hand, a patient advised to take complete bed rest has to stay in bed all the time, use a bedpan to urinate, and make do with sponge baths.”
Staying in bed for most of the day may seem like a dream come true—you’re excused from your chores, plus you can sleep and watch television for as long as you want. But inactivity has its limits, and it won’t be long before you will find yourself bored. In addition, if you have older children, you will most likely feel guilty for not being able to join them at play, and your husband may miss being intimate with you.
The good news is you don’t have to think of best rest as a prison sentence; there are ways you can still be productive and make your confinement more bearable. Here are some suggestions:
(Photos courtesy of of sxc.hu and Flickr Creative Commons)
