First trimester Pregnancy and Open Water Pool Dives

[tmp]

All,

I have read all of the related articles that are reference within the board and on the internet. I was toying with calling DAN just to see what they would say. But I wonder what the forum thinks:

First trimester / Pool Dives Only for Open Water Certs.

I am a DM and was recently tasked with this question, of course the usual do not dive while pregnant is always the response. But what do people think of someone who was merely wanting to complete the OW classroom and the confined pool dives while in their first three months of pregnancy??

Off the top of my head I am trying to locate the negatives? any help/thoughts?
I believe that the majority of studies follow diving at depth and deal with off-gassing and nitrogen build up within the circulation system....but what about this....

In the end a student would be in the classroom, then in the pool for two afternoons - never really under the water for more than say 10-15 mins consecutively (more like 5 mins here and 5 mins there while doing skills) and never below 10 ft (because you couldn't get to 10 ft in the pool unless you were laying flat as possible). Matter of fact a majority of the instructors complete the skills portion in standing water 5-6 feet tops.

So is there truly a risk of bubble formation within a fetus/embryo at those depths/timeframes.

Or do you stand by the old "better safe than sorry" and don't do it?

Help me out......I am curious as to what others would advise their students.

 

[boulderjohn]

I had a discussion about this with an instructor in our shop when she got pregnant. She would not even do the basic pool dives because she wanted to be absolutely safe. There is not enough research to make a good decision one way or the other, and the problem is, how would you do the research safely in the first place? I am not a woman, but if I were a pregnant female, I would not want my baby to be the first one that conclusively shows it was a mistake.

 

[TSandM]

There are two questions involved here. One is what is "safe", and the other is what anyone could reasonably advise a student to do. They are NOT the same, and neither question addresses what the actual risks are.

Birth defects are horrible, and disabled children are an enormous emotional and financial drain on a family. You do NOT want to be the person who told the student she was fine to do her pool sessions, when she gives birth to an abnormal child. And the rate of birth defects is sufficiently high at baseline, that the possibility of an abnormal baby in someone who dove during pregnancy, even in a pool, is not remote. If the woman did not dive, one can say definitively that the birth defect is not due to diving. If she did dive, it is more difficult to do that . . .

The person who tells her it is okay to do her pool dives while pregnant is the person hanging on the liability hook if the child is abnormal. Is it likely, in a purely theoretical sense, that pool dives could have any deleterious effect on a fetus? No, not at all. Do we have ANY proof that it is benign? None. Therefore, if the baby isn't right, it's going to be very difficult to defend the woman's underwater time during the pregnancy, since general consensus is that it's wiser to refrain, and you told the woman it was okay. That's why you're almost vanishingly unlikely to find any medical professional who will give a blanket approval for even pool time underwater.

Combine a high risk situation with a great many unknowns, and you have a bunch of very frightened medical professionals.

 

[SanDiegoSidemount]

I say, don't take any chances at all. "It's only 9 months of your life." (Actually less for an already pregnant mom.) "Relax, slow down, and enjoy." Then your student can get back to diving as much as she wants after the baby is born healthy and happy.

My wife snorkeled at the surface during her pregnancy last year, but that was all. Shortly after our daughter was born, diving with baby asleep in the boat cabin was actually super easy for the babysitters (my older sons). Now that she's a year old, she's much more of a handful to manage while mom & dad are in the water!

 

[spectrum]

Disclaimer, I'm a medical zero......

I agree with the prevailing thoughts of not taking chances.

To elevate it to where things could potentially go wrong consider that when diving to anything beyond let's say snorkel depth there are in fact pressure shifts in breathing gas that you will not experience topside. To go beyond that would be conjecture on my part but to ignore the potential would be reckless.

Pete

 

[Goodtime Adventures]

For me it'd be an outright no. There's just too little research in this field to be able to make a decision on what is 'safe'. But personally I would never allow a pregnant female into one of my classes - or allow any other staff to - regardless of whether its was just a pool session or not.

When it comes down to it, for the sake of a bit of time spent sitting on the pool bottom, is it really worth taking the chance? Also from a purely practical POV, they'd have to wait to do the dives anyway, so isn't it better to leave the pool skills too so its fresh in memory? Fairly pointless to do it, just to have to take a refresher confined session again before progressing when they get back in the water.

 

[doctormike]

Here, we hashed some of this out in a previous thread a little while ago...

 

[dmoore19]

Actually for a PADI class you are required to answer a medical questionaire. One of the first questions is about being pregnant.

If you answer yes then you will be required to have a doctor sign off to proceed. I don't believe you will be able to get tha approval and I don't think if you did the instructor would proceed with training either.

https://www.padi.com/english/common/courses/forms/pdf/10063-ver2-0.pdf

 

[tmp]

Agree 100 % with every line of thought above.....guess I was just looking clarification to what I already knew.

 

[DocVikingo]

The topic of diving on compressed air while pregnant has been long & extensively covered on this board, as you have no doubt seen by your search of our archives.

The bottom line is we don't know & very likely never will know about the safety of scuba during pregnancy, even at pool depths.

E.g:

"J Obstet Gynaecol. 2006 Aug;26(6):509-13.

Scuba diving and pregnancy: can we determine safe limits?

St Leger Dowse M, Gunby A, Moncad R, Fife C, Bryson P.

Diving Diseases Research Centre, Hyperbaric Medical Centre, Plymouth, UK. marguerite@mstld.co.uk

No human data, investigating the effects on the fetus of diving, have been published since 1989. We investigated any potential link between diving while pregnant and fetal abnormalities by evaluating field data from retrospective study No.1 (1990/2) and prospective study No.2 (1996/2000). Some 129 women reported 157 pregnancies over 1,465 dives. Latest gestational age reported while diving was 35 weeks. One respondent reported 92 dives during a single pregnancy, with two dives to 65 m in the 1st trimester. In study No.2, >90% of women ceased diving in the 1st trimester, compared with 65% in the earlier study. Overall, the women did not conduct enough dives per pregnancy, therefore no significant correlation between diving and fetal abnormalities could be established. These data indicate women are increasingly observing the diving industry recommendation and refraining from diving while pregnant. Field studies are not likely to be useful, or the way forward, for future diving and pregnancy research. Differences in placental circulation between humans and other animals limit the applicability of animal research for pregnancy and diving studies. It is unlikely that the effect of scuba diving on the unborn human fetus will be established."

The general advice of the medical community, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists & Divers Alert Network (DAN), is not to dive during pregnancy.

Regards,

DocVikingo