Top pregnancy skin care tips

Due to the change in your hormones, the skin on your face may dry out and get tight. Redness is more frequent during pregnancy and gets worse at certain times of year, mainly in the winter. To avoid further drying out your skin, avoid taking off your makeup with water, and use micellar water, cleansing milk or makeup remover cream. Use a moisturising product morning and night on your face and the rest of your body. As soon as your skin begins to feel tight, nourish it with a soothing mask and moisturising serum. 

Don't wait until you suffer skin reactions to invest in products for sensitive skin. Constantly changing hormones may make your skin intolerant to products that had never bothered you before. The best solution is to adapt your pregnancy skin care to sensitive skin, and maybe even try organic products.  

One of the most traumatising pregnancy skin problems is reliving your teenage years, with angry red spots!

A lot of progesterone is produced during these 9 months, which stimulates the sebaceous glands, which leads to spots. You therefore need to deep-clean your skin and use an anti acne cream to fight against these imperfections. You can also treat the most visible spots locally, with an antiseptic product. Finally, gently exfoliate at least once a week to avoid pores getting blocked.  

When you are pregnant, your hormones mess up the normal functioning of your body. Pigment cells can go out of control and the cocktail of hormones and UV rays is almost explosive. Increased oestrogen may lead to the hyperpigmentation of the skin with the appearance of brown marks on the sensitive areas of the face: the forehead, cheeks and upper lip. This is the pregnancy mask, one of the most infamous pregnancy skin problems. Therefore, expose your skin to the sun as little as possible and just at more gentle times of day and never go out without sun protection, whether in winter or in summer (no less than SPF 50 in the summer). You should therefore use a day cream with SPF.  

Over the first 12 weeks, some women can go up two cup sizes! To avoid any discomfort, you need to look after your new chest. Even though it might be unpleasant, finish off a shower with a jet of cold water on your breasts, to firm up the tissue. And don't forget to moisturise daily to ensure suppleness and softness.  

Stretch marks are the number one enemy of pregnant women. Although we cannot prevent them, we can at least minimise their effects. When you gain weight, the skin stretches and must create more elastin and collagen fibres. But hormone changes slow down this mechanism and the skin's elastic fibres break more easily. Red or even purple streaks appear on the stomach, chest, hips and thighs. From the beginning of your pregnancy, apply anti stretch mark oils on your whole body once or twice a day. Continue this up to 4 months after giving birth. 

The phenomenon of heavy legs is accentuated if you are pregnant during the summer and it gets very hot. This feeling of discomfort can be soothed by applying an anti heavy legs product that contains menthol or camphor and massaging it up from your ankles to your thighs. You can also apply a jet of cold water at the end of your shower to soothe your legs.   

 - Essential oils: although there is no scientific study on the effects of aromatherapy during pregnancy and on your baby's health, one thing is for sure: pure essential oils are extremely active, so not necessarily harmless. So, make sure you avoid them for these 9 months.

- Hot wax: forget about hair removal with hot wax for the time being, as this can really irritate skin that is already fragile due to the heavy leg feeling.

- Massage: back massages and foot reflexology can cause contractions.You must tell the practician that you are pregnant and avoid all massages before the 2nd trimester. Then, only choose massages specifically for pregnant women.

- Vitamin A: any anti acne or anti wrinkle treatments containing “real” vitamin A acids, even those applied locally (creams, lotions) and in small quantities on the face, can cause foetal malformation. Remove them from your pregnancy skin care routine.