@geargrrl what do you think happens when you tip over and fall? You hit your belly. Trauma includes tipping over falls. The last trauma c/s I did was for a fall.
I think that there is some confusion about what the concerns are when skiing while pregnant. For the most part, the skiing part is fine and it is very old fashioned to consider exercise in pregnancy to be problematic. It is in fact likely extremely healthy for a pregnant woman to exercise.
However, the issues surrounding skiing while pregnant are not about exercise, they are about falling.
Up until 12-14 weeks the uterus is still inside the pelvis and protected on all sides so unless you get T-Boned in a major car accident and end up with a broken pelvis, your pregnancy is safe and skiing is fine.
24 weeks is considered the cusp of viability (some places consider 22-23wks) after that age a baby could survive (though the morbidity free survival rate is 3%).
The issues change once a pregnancy is viable because distance from a facility that can rapidly deliver your baby in an emergency becomes a real concern. It's actually the same problem with snowmobiling accidents (which also have a high morbidity and mortality rate). It's not the injury or the accident, it's the amount of time it takes to get to a facility.
The other issue is that once you hit about 20 weeks your body starts to change more and more rapidly. Certain times during the pregnancy can actually see the baby grow 2-4 ounces per day. That is seriously going to affect your balance and increase the risk for a fall.
Finally, the falls themselves. There is a trauma scoring system that works well to determine severity of injury and likelihood of survival in non-pregnant people. In pregnancy there is no equivalent scoring system because there have been fetal demises associated with minimal trauma. There is no predictable way to equate severity of injury or fall with likelihood of adverse outcomes.
The main problem is that the placenta is not permanently attached to the side of the uterus, and in fact that interface is created to fail after delivery of the child. The closer to full term, the more tenuous the placental/uterine interface. This is where falls without direct abdominal trauma can be an issue. A bounce and butt slide can induce shearing forces (placenta moving at different speeds than uterus) which can cause placental separation (emulates post delivery forces).
Furthermore in direct trauma most of you is compressible (fat, muscle, guts) but the placenta is not compressible and amniotic fluid is not compressible. Therefore what happens if everything but the placenta gets compressed. Again, forces which lead to placental separation.
Basically the most important issue is how far along you are. Prior to 16 weeks, not a problem. After around 22 weeks, big problem. 16-22 weeks shades of grey.
). But I would ask the doctors for more details, to help in your decision. One No and one Yes doesn’t give you much help!
