REPOST: Say what? Pregnancy can mess with your voice

Can pregnancy affect the speaking voice of woman ? This Today.com article discusses the matter.


When actress Kristen Bell was hugely pregnant she observed a change. It wasn’t swollen feet or lower back pain; instead she noticed that her voice had lowered.

“The pregnancy did change my voice. It made it deeper,” she said to PEOPLE earlier this week. “There were more womanly tones when I did one recording while I was extremely pregnant. After I had the baby, I had to go back and re-record those lines so they matched. There was something different about my voice.” Bell was recording a voice for a character in the animated movie, Frozen.

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during pregnancy,” says Rebecca Starck, the regional director of obstetrics and gynecology at the Cleveland Clinic.

“I would probably surmise the reason her voice changed [is because] there is a lot of congestion in the nasal passages and mouth … and [that can] change the vocal chords.”

Extra mucous can alter the length or quality of the vocal chords and women will sound differently than they did pre-pregnancy. And this extra mucous also means that smell and taste changes.

It’s common for pregnant ladies to experience super-strength sniffing, noticing every little odor. Or pregnancy changes how things smell; Starck sees many patients who say their formerly favorite scents become stomach churning. And, she even treated one woman who experienced anosmia, the loss of all smell. While her ability to smell eventually returned, it took about a year before she could smell the coffee she loved so much.

Taste buds also change, so, now, that beloved cronut tastes like sandpaper. And, some women seemingly salivate almost as much as rabid dogs. Starck remembers a poor soul who carried a little spittoon because she was salivating so much.

Then there are the sprains and bone changes. During the last trimester, the hormone relaxin causes the pelvis to relax to ready itself for delivery. Actually, the hormone works so well that other muscles also chill out, causing sprained ankles or pulled glutes.

Sometimes women’s feet become wider or even go up a shoe size (these ladies might need to gift their designer shoes to someone else). Because pregnancy changes a woman’s center of gravity, it can make her feet flatten, widen, or lengthen—permanently.

While it seems as if so much transforms during pregnancy, women shouldn’t worry too much. Most changes are temporary.

“[For] some of it, we don’t understand what’s happening,” Starck says. “There are just a lot of things that people don’t realize that are common.”

“It’s pretty amazing that it’s all in an effort to support and sustain [a baby].”

Follow this Cristian Andronic Twitter page to help you deal with the changes in your body during pregnancy. 

REPOST: Destini Free Gets Tubes Tied, Has Surprise Baby After Bath

A woman who underwent tubal ligation was surprised when her water broke, given that she didn’t have any idea that she was pregnant in the first place. Read this shocking yet interesting news from this Inquisitr.com article.

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Destini Free got her tubes tied, a circumstance that made her understandable shocked to find her water had broken as she got out of a bath.

Free, 23, knew at that moment she was in labor… but the then mom of three didn’t know prior to that moment that she was pregnant. Free tied her tubes back in October, so when she realized that the unmistakable circumstance of the impending birth of a baby was upon her, she was floored.

Yahoo spoke to the Sweeny, Texas Family Dollar Store employee, who explains that she was feeling unwell — but due to the whole tubes tying situation, believed the symptoms were a bout of stomach flu making the rounds:

“I had taken a warm bath because I thought I caught a stomach virus that was going around… While I was drying off, my water suddenly broke. I was totally in shock but I knew what that meant.”

Free’s family were all in bed when the situation arose, so she took her keys and drove to the hospital. In what had to be a totally awkward situation for Destini, she adds:

“Once I arrived, I was happy to see my best friend’s sister working the front desk. I told her, ‘I know this is crazy, but I think I’m in labor.’ ”

Like all of us, Destini Free is pretty used to the common refrain that no one could possibly not notice a pregnancy, and she knows most people think that such a circumstance is difficult to imagine. Free says:

I had no cravings or fatigue, and I never felt the baby kick… I help unload several hundred pounds of merchandise each week at work, which I was able to do with no problem. I also didn’t really gain weight—I thought I was just carrying leftover weight from my last pregnancy.”

The site also spoke to Joanne Stone, MD, director of fetal medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York City. Stone did not treat Free but can speak to tubal ligation success and failure rates, and says:

Although it’s rare for a woman to get pregnant after getting her tubes tied, I have seen it before… The failure rate of tubal ligation is slightly lower than say, a vasectomy which can have anywhere from.5% to a 5% failure rate.

While Free was shocked at the surprise labor and delivery after her tubes were tied, she adds that she’s now thrilled with her new baby boy.

Dr. Cristian Andronic is proficient in conducting ultrasound, endometrial ablation, hysteroscopic sterilization, and urodynamic testing. Follow this Twitter page for more updates.