Why your hands go numb at night in pregnancy !

You wake up at 3am and your hand is just... gone. Pins and needles from your wrist to your fingertips. You shake it out, flap it around like a confused bird, and slowly it comes back.

Then it happens again the next night.

What you're most likely feeling is carpal tunnel syndrome of pregnancy. Your body is holding on to a lot more fluid than usual. Some of that fluid collects in the narrow tunnel in your wrist that your median nerve passes through. The nerve gets squeezed, and your thumb, index and middle fingers go numb, tingly or achy. It is very common from the second trimester onwards, it is not dangerous, and for most women it settles within a few weeks of delivery.

First, the ring. Take it off tonight.

This is the practical bit nobody warns you about. Fingers swell fastest overnight, and they swell more as you get further along. A ring that felt slightly loose on Tuesday can be genuinely stuck by Thursday morning.

If your rings are starting to feel snug, take them off now while it's easy. Put them on a chain around your neck if you don't want to be without them. Getting a ring cut off at 34 weeks is a bad day, and it is completely avoidable.

What actually helps at night

• Don't sleep on your hands. Curling your wrists under your pillow or under your cheek is the single biggest trigger. Keep the wrist straight.
• Prop the hand up on a pillow so it's slightly above heart level. Gravity does the draining for you.
• A wrist splint is the thing most women wish they'd tried sooner. It just stops your wrist bending while you're asleep. Available at any chemist, cheap, and works better than almost anything else. Worth asking your doctor about.
• Shake and stretch when it wakes you. Hang the arm off the bed, open and close the fist slowly, roll the wrist.

What helps in the daytime

Take breaks from your laptop and phone. Repetitive typing and scrolling makes it worse, and if you're working through your pregnancy you're doing a lot of both. Every hour, drop your hands, roll your shoulders, stretch your fingers back.

Keep moving generally. Sitting still all day lets fluid pool. A short walk after meals helps more than it sounds like it should.

And drink your water. It feels backwards when the problem is fluid retention, but being under-hydrated actually makes your body hold on to more, not less.

The one thing to take seriously

Mild swelling in hands and feet that comes and goes is ordinary pregnancy. But call your doctor the same day if you get sudden puffiness in your face and hands together with a bad headache, blurry vision or flashing lights, or pain under your ribs. That combination needs a blood pressure check to rule out pre-eclampsia.

Also mention it at your next visit if the numbness is constant rather than coming and going, or if your grip is genuinely weakening and you're dropping things. That's worth a proper look rather than a wrist splint.

The honest timeline

Most women find it peaks in the last few weeks and then fades over the first month or two after delivery, as all that extra fluid leaves your system. Some notice it lingers a bit longer while breastfeeding, partly because of how you're holding your wrists during feeds. Watch your positioning, use a pillow under the baby, keep the wrist neutral.

It's an odd, annoying, oddly under-discussed part of pregnancy. Your hands are not failing you. They're just waterlogged.