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| Air Travel in Pregnancy |  There were times, when pregnancy considered as something, which sent women to their homes as soon as their bellies began to grow, because it was inappropriate if any woman, who was pregnant, was seen in some public place. However, even now there exist companies, which do enforce the rule that flying when pregnant is not allowed after the woman’s 36th pregnancy week, mostly because there is the risk that she might become delivering earlier than expected.
As for nowadays, pregnancy can hardly change anyone’s schedule and plans, except if there is any complication, when a woman has to stay on a bed rest to prevent her from miscarriage. Of course, there are some exceptions, like a woman has to carry a bottle of water with her everywhere, or she is to know where all the bathroom are, etc. however travel is not an exception for pregnancy at all.
Nowadays, as families move further and further away from one another, travel becomes more and more prevalent. Moreover, going somewhere for holidays or traveling as a last trip to see relatives before the baby arrives or as a last romantic vacation becomes more and more usual. This often includes leaving the country and it often occurs by air.
Everyone knows about air travel’s share of bad stories told and rumors spread. If someone adds pregnancy to this mixture and it would be difficult to believer the great number of things, which are said about air travel during the period of pregnancy.
The great majority of the investigations on pregnancy and traveling by air have been conducted on female flight attendants. In accordance with one of them there was a slight decrease in first trimester miscarriage, however, this happened with the flight attendants, who worked a greater number of hours.
According to other investigations, there is a slight increase in potential problems, therefore, none of these problems proved to have any relation to the length of time in the air, the route flown or any other flight - related phenomenon.
Anyway, flying is considered to be fairly safe for a woman while she is pregnant, even for the flight attendant, with some minor adjustments. However, taking into consideration that average passengers do not fly for a long period of time, none of these concerns may be relevant to the average flier, even if she is pregnant.
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