There's a "thing", isn't there, about not getting your eyes tested...

[Thumbwitch]

while pregnant?

I'm sitting here trying to watch the tennis and having a little trouble focusing, but I'm 26w pg and seem to remember that pg can affect eyesight? Or am I just wishful thinking?
I have Very Bad eyesight as it is but it hasn't changed much over the last few years (-8 in both eyes, give or take a quarter dioptre)

I think there is, but can't remember why.

I vaguely remember it being something about your eyesight being different while pregnant, so you'd need the test redone after you'd given birth anyway?
I might well have dreamt this little nugget of information though... I do that.

You could ring an optician and see what they say?

I did, and my eyes improved in both pg. Stayed that way too. To do with relaxin relaxing tight short sighted muscles and increased blood flow.

Don't know about actual eye sight alone but the changing hormone balances can affect you if you wear contact lenses, so indirectly that does affect your sight. Mine got very dry and I found lenses irritating for months during both pgs.

Can't ring optician just now as is middle of the night here - wearing glasses rather than contacts - but thank you!

I could always google it, I suppose

Yep, I started a thread about new glasses in Style & Beauty the other day, and got lots of replies saying don't do it now as I'm pregnant and the prescription won't be reliable.

Yes, eyesight gets worse in pregnancy. I had it explained to me an optician once, something to do with relaxing of something... My eyesight always gets worse in pregnancy.

Bollocks, I had an eye test and got new glasses a few weeks ago, i'm 17 weeks now but as I was only about 10 weeks I didn't think to mention it to the optician.

I heard it was something to do with the changes of the amount of fluid in the body and that can effect the fluid in the back of the eyes.

Not sure if that's true though! My eyesight hasn't changed during either pregnancy, still wear the same script of glasses as I did before.

It's about the only blumming part of my body that doesn't change with pregnancy!!

I had my usual contact lens check whilst 8+mths pg & the optician said that my (v slight short sighted) prescription was made slightly worse by the relaxing of the ligaments etc. but that it would get better after the birth.

If you normally have glasses, I guess it depends how pricey they are, how pg you are & how much different your prescription becomes. If you normally don't wear glasses, I personally wouldn't bother with getting them unless it would be dangerous to drive or something.

I was having dizzy spells at 29 weeks and went to opticians and she told me they recommend not to have your eyes tested between 3 months pg to 3 months after the birth as the hormone levels can cause problems with your eyes. She asked if I wanted to continue as there was every possibility that problems now wouldn't be there after the birth.

I had mine done anyway as we were ruling out eyes as causing the dizzy spells and mine came out as 20:20, no idea what caused the dizzyness, now 37 weeks and everything bar my eyes is packing up on me!

Yup. Went to two opticians last weekend as my frames are falling apart & I need new glasses both said they wouldn't advise testing as eyesight can be affected in pregnancy & I might find I have to change prescription after the birth.

Can't afford to pay for lenses twice so I'm just going to persevere a little longer.

I had a sight teSt at specsavers less than a month ago and I'm now 28 weeks

I told them at the time I was 24ish weeks pregnant and neither the assistant who carried out the pre test checks nor the guy who did the actual sight teSt mentioned pregnancy would have any effect! Like one of the previous posters I am oveR minus 8 normally, but it did come out as minus 9 this time which I was surprised at.

I shall interrogate them when I go for my contact lens check later this month, it can't be that they just wanted to take my money regardless, as my sight teSt fee is waived as part of my contact lens package.

I can see pregnancy might affect things but if you can't see you need to be able to, especially if you rely on glasses/contact lenses for things like driving. Can';t remember whether i did have sight tests while pregnant but don't remember ever improving at any rate (am so short sighted I get free sight tests. And a tiny amount of NHS voucher towards glasses :))