No Relief From Itching!

***yawn***

I had another miserable night last night, but more on that in a minute.

Instead of just being a good patient and following my doctor's orders, I went into "self diagnose" mode and browsed the internet to see what I could do about it. I had read on Wednesday that an iron deficiency can cause itchiness, so when I got home I compared the boxes of my old prenatal vitamins to the new box. The old box had MUCH more iron in them than the new box, so I assumed low iron HAD to be my problem... So Wednesday night I took an iron pill thinking the itch would be gone by morning. :)

Let me say, that from the time I stopped taking my prenatals on Monday through Wednesday, the itchiness HAD gotten better. Quite a bit better actually, the itchiness wasn't gone completely, but I was only needing itch ointment on occasion rather than every hour on the hour.

Low and behold, Wednesday night / Thursday morning, I woke up in the middle of the night to some pretty bad itchiness! I was able to fall back asleep without much effort though. Yesterday was pretty miserable, I was itchy all day, despite numerous applications of itch cream. Then we come to last night. The worst it has been the whole pregnancy. I woke up at 2:00 to firey itchiness on my neck and upper chest. I put on some ointment, and tried to ignore it and go back to bed, but I had no such luck. I was just miserable lying there in bed, so I got up and went and sat down in the bathroom for a while, so I wasn't tossing and turning, waking Jeff up. I remembered my mom had read something about putting a cold wash cloth on the itchy area, so I decided to try that. MAN did that feel GOOD. I was amazed! I also dug around underneath the sink and found a tube of hydrocortizone cream. Probably not the smartest thing in the world to apply steroids to my skin while pregnant, but I was desperate. I figure one application can't hurt too bad. If nothing else, the baby will be a better linebacker someday. :) So anyway, I put some of that on, and took the washcloth back to bed with me. I laid it on my neck / upper chest, and tried to fall back asleep, this was around 3:30 am. I woke up this morning, so apparently I did make it back asleep! The washcloth was on the floor, but it's nice to know something worked for a quick fix like that.

So I'm DONE with iron. I don't have any proof that's what brought about this last itchy bout, but it's the only thing that changed this week, so I'm suspicious. I'll go back to my doctor's orders and go without my vitamins today and the rest of the weekend, and see how it goes. If I don't see improvement, I'm going to call my doctor on Monday because itchiness can also be a sign of liver malfunction, which I don't seem to fit all the symptoms for, but I don't want to play any games.

And I want the itchiness to go away!

26 weeks today! It's my last week of the Second Trimester. Third Trimester here I come!