Pregnant Mom Posted on Facebook About Itchy Skin and It May Have Saved Her Baby's Life

Pregnancy is a wonderful time of anticipation, heartburn and people coming out of the woodwork to present you with old wives’ tales like they’re a rare gift. Everywhere you turn, someone has an anecdote or bit of advice.

Most of it is well-meaning, though not all of it is helpful, especially because mothers-to-be are already flooded with fears about potential difficulties.

But when it comes to easily missed warning signs linked to conditions that are more common than you’d think, it pays to be aware and to have a knowledgeable support team.

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Christina DePino of Denham Springs, Louisiana, was in the final stretch of pregnancy in 2017 when she logged in to Facebook to air her pregnancy grievances.

She was at 35 weeks and had noticed a horrible itching sensation.

“What had started as an all-over itch started to become more pronounced on the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet,” she told NBC’s “Today“.

“It got to the point that I could no longer sleep at night … my arms and legs were bleeding from all the scratching.”

Some friends piped up and responded to her post, urging her to go get checked out because her terrible itching sounded a lot like cholestasis.

“Very simply, cholestasis is the sludge of your gallbladder building up and becoming more sluggish — and as a result, chemicals build up in your bloodstream that should have been eliminated,” Dr. Donnica Moore told the outlet. “And that can deposit beneath the skin and cause this terrible, terrible itching.”