Women might expect to need new clothes after giving birth. But a bigger pair of shoes? Well, yeah. Because pregnancy can actually lengthen and widen a woman's feet. That's according to a study in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation that's probably not a surprise to a lot of women.
Neil Segal, a rehab doc at the University of Iowa, heard that some local women had to don larger shoes after pregnancy. So he and colleagues measured the feet of 49 women during their first trimester and again five months after childbirth. Indeed, nearly half the women went up a shoe size after childbirth, to accommodate their longer, flatter feet. And multiple pregnancies may add to that effect, Segal says.