Early next week, I’m going to visit Las Vegas for work (no, really!). I’ll be visiting a friend who is currently about 6 months pregnant. I suggested swimming, but she said she had one doctor (of a few she’s seeing) tell her that pregnant women shouldn’t lay in the sun or tan in any way, because it can mess up the baby’s eyes.
Now, I’m not asking medical advice. By all means, she ought to do what her doctors think is best for her, blah-dy blah. I’m just genuinely curious. I mean, maybe it’s just that I’m from SoCal, but I see women of all staged of pregnancy laying out and tanning at lakes and beaches. I can certainly see avoiding a tanning bed, but the regular sunlight?
So is there any basis for the assertion that pregnant women can’t be out in the sun?
Not a doctor, however I have been pregnant 4 times in 4 different decades, and this theory is really new to me. (Not that there couldn’t be some new weird theory, and of course doctors are as susceptible as anyone to NWTs if not more so.)
In certain stages of pregnancy, women are more easily sunburned. But it seems to me the baby’s eyes are very well protected, being as they are in a dark place and all.
I’ve never had a child myself, but my conclusion was the same as yours Hilarity N. Suze. It just seemed so completely strange that the light would penetrate the skin, fat (she’s a tiny thing, but everyone has some), the abdominal muscle, the uterus/lining, and fluids.
I imagine there might be some concern that she may grow dehydrated faster, but that’s a concern in Vegas regardless of what she’s doing :).
And it isn’t that she’s a particularly high risk pregnancy or anything. She’s young (18), very healthy, the baby is actually a big big for how far along she is, and all is well.
Some pregnant women’s melanin gets a little screwed up, and tanning can create either a “pregnancy mask” (think raccoon eyes) or what would be called a “treasure trail” on a guy (a darker line leading down from your belly button).
I tanned during both my pregnancies and it was no big deal. Being hot was pretty uncomfortable, though.
Might the issue be vitamin D overdose? The skin naturally produces vitamin D when exposed to ultraviolet, and a light-skinned person getting a lot of sun can produce significantly more than the body needs. This is one of the main reasons for skin color variability in different parts of the world: Dark-skinned peoples near the Equator produce less D for a given amount of sunlight, but (in their native environments) get more sun, so it works out to the same amount. I seem to recall that too much D can be problematic for pregnant women, but I don’t recall the details.
Can’t say I’ve ever heard that one. All the pregnant women I’ve known have been encouraged to swim, and seeing how nice it is to get the weight all floaty, they all want to swim. I spent the last month of my first pregnancy mooching off every swimming-pool-owning friend I had. (The kid’s eyes, so far, are fine, which is a miracle considering that I started wearing glasses at age 5. She’s 6.)
An eye infection in a baby can be potentially serious, particularly if there is transmission of gonorrhea or chlamydia during vaginal delivery. On a trip to Vegas, this is far more likely than the baby getting eye damage due to sun exposure, which I have never heard of despite four months of obstetrics training. A web search reveals no evidence of same. Suntanning can make some skin disorders of pregnancy worse.
I would guess that the doctor is talking about a theoretical risk of retinoblastoma, a type of uncommon eye tumour found in babies, that can be induced by somatic mutations or inherited. Theoretically, radiation exposure might be a risk factor, but for the low levels involved in suntanning it’s probably one of those things that if it is going to happen, it’s going to happen regardless of whether you suntan --some people are probably more susceptible than others.
Vitamin D is fat soluble so you could overdose on it. But a pregnant woman could probably get 2000 IU per day without harm, and this amount would be hard to get from sun exposure. I’d bet the issue is retinoblastoma, but I really don’t see this as a big risk.
Vitamin A is certainly not a good idea for a foetus, and a lot of “tanning pills” contain beta carotene and other carotenoids- precursors of vitamin A. Therefore someone taking tanning pills or Vitamin A supplements during pregnancy could easily be taking more than a safe amount.
Taking tanning pills or anti-oxidant vitamin tablets to counter the effects of sun-related skin ageing (something more and more people are doing) is therefore an extremely bad idea during pregnancy.
Pregnant women can also be more sensitive to the sun, and more likely to get a sun burn, heatstroke or a heat rash (prickly heat or hives). If your friend does go out in the sun she should make sure to wear plenty of sun cream, cover up, avoid direct sunlight between 12-3pm, drink lots of water and to wear a hat with a wide brim.
Sorry.
High doses of vitamin A in pregnancy can lead to multiple birth defects, including blindness.
Like I said, I have no clue what is going on, my theory was that “no tanning pills, they might make your baby blind” might have been taken as “no tanning, it might make your baby blind”, i.e. a breakdown in communication.
A decent theroy, IMO. I’ve heard of even more rube-goldberg reasons to “not do” something during pregnancy, whether made up or real. I know I was crazy enough during my first pregnancy to insist we needed a new modern microwave rather than the old cranky one we’d had since time immemorial.
I do wonder about “High doses of Vitamin A”. As I had it explained to me, it was actually high doses of artificial or non-straight-from-the-source vitamin A. That is, though you take enough to get you up to the recc level in supplementation of 10,000 U a day, it’s not going to put you over the edge to then eat carrots with every meal, and drink a popular pregnancy tea, Red Raspberry Leaf; because the vitamin A in RRL tea and carrots and other vegetables is of a different composition than the ‘artificial stuff’ in supplements. And that your body won’t absorb it if it doesn’t need it, therefore “more” from “natural” sources can’t put you over the edge.
And that I heard from a licenced medical professional - hooey? I just figure 10,000 U is a conservative number, and what we can get in vitamin supplements generally, and that to consume that much again from “natural sources” daily would be impossible (like those fiber commercials that have a woman eating an apple or head of broccoli every 30 min to get “enough” fiber in her diet instead of taking their supplements).
Could he also just be thinking about increasing body temperature? I don’t know if you get as hot lying in the sun as you do in a hot tub, but raising the body temperature too high, especially during the first trimester, can put you at risk of various spine defects (not blindness).
My cousin’s wife had a baby at the beginning of June, and she spent the last two months of her pregnancy at her neighbor’s pool. Besides getting a very dark tan, she got even darker blotches all over her face. It was apparently a side effect of the pregnancy that made the melatonin go crazy… or something. The splotches weren’t harmful, AFAIK, but they looked like bruises. I made a mental note to stay out of the sun while pregnant.
The dark facial mask, called melasma (or less accurately, chloasma) is common in pregancy with sun exposure. Suntan lotion on the face is a good idea, along with wearing a hat. This has nothing to do with babies eyes, though.
Another odd musing. There is a reciprocal relationship between sun, Vitamin D, and folic acid. Specifically, lots of sun lowers your folic acid levels while raising your Vitamin D levels. And low folic acid levels in women around the time of conception have been associated with neural tube defects. Nothing to do with eyes, but spina bifida and Chiari malformations up through anencephaly.
However, that matters more before you get pregnant, and in the first nine weeks (embryogenesis), than afterwards. So the advice as proffered still sounds nuts.