A burning sensation that you feel in your throat right down to your breast bone is termed heartburn. It occurs when the gastric acids from the stomach reach up the food pipe, and leave a bitter and sour taste in your mouth or throat.

Now, why does heartburn happen during pregnancy? When you are pregnant, your uterine muscles and the valve separating the food pipe and stomach are relaxed by progesterone. Once these are relaxed, the gastric acids ride up the food pipe from the stomach and cause heartburn. Not only heartburn, progesterone aids in sluggish digestion.

Whatever may be the reason, you need to be careful once you start feeling heartburn during pregnancy.

There are some easy remedies you need to follow to prevent heartburn. It is rightly said that “prevention is better than cure”.

• Avoid eating very spicy and fatty food, especially during dinner time. Whatever food you eat, make sure they have less spice, less oil, less starch, etc. and should not be heavy to digest.
• Stick to those food that would aid in easy and quick digestion. In a week’s time, you would know what food you should eat, and what food you should avoid. Make a list and eat accordingly.
• If you have a healthy appetite, you need to eat your meals in small (less than what you would eat otherwise) quantities. On the other hand, if you are a small eater or suffer from morning sicknesses and do not feel like eating anything, make sure not to go empty stomach for long.
• While eating, make sure you do not eat your food in a quick manner—it should not look as if you are gulping down your food. Take time to chew the food properly and eat slowly.
• At the time of drinking liquids like water, milk, tea, coffee and juices, do not finish a glass at one go or a cup at two or three gulps. Rather sip the liquid slowly, one sip at a time. Drinking liquids should be between meals, and not with meals as it would tend to make the stomach heavy.
• After lunch or any heavy meal, make sure to stand or sit for at least an hour (for the food to be digested properly), and not immediately lie down or bend down to pick up something as this would initiate the gastric acids to ride up the food pipe.
• Where your dinner is concerned, give two hour gap (it is the minimum) between completion of dinner and your bed time. If you do not give time for your food to digest, you would only be inviting heartburn heartily! If this be the case, make sure to complete your dinner latest by 8 pm and hit bed around 10.30 pm.
• When you go to bed, or whenever you are lying down to rest, keep your chest and head in a little upward slant compared to the lower body, and not remain aligned to the bed. This slanting position would help the stomach keep the gastric acids in place and not send the acids up the food pipe.

Try the above and you will be bidding your heartburn farewell.