On more than one occasion I have heard some woman explain that when he was a mother his foot grew. "How strange," I thought when I heard something similar, "it will be that they swell and that is why you should buy something bigger shoes."
However, some mothers continued with a half number more (more or less that is how much it grows) even after being a mother and, obviously, the swelling was no longer present.
Then I began to investigate, more out of curiosity than for something else, and now I can say without fear of being mistaken that yes, that the feet of pregnant women grow. Not those of all, but those of many.
The feet grow by the action of relaxin
The reason that the feet of pregnant women (and then mothers) grow is the relaxin, a hormone that always secretes, but that reaches some peaks during pregnancy, whose function is to help the baby to develop and favor its delivery in childbirth, by relaxing the ligaments of the pelvic joints, making them more elastic and allowing them to open more and widen the birth canal.
Well, the same relaxin which helps the pelvis to open makes the rest of the ligaments also more elastic and that is where the pregnant woman's foot comes in. With more elasticity, the arches of the feet flatten slightly (with the help of weight gain) and for this reason the foot is somewhat larger.
Do the feet return to their original size?
It depends, although most of the time it does. There are women who express that during the pregnancies they grew up and then they stayed that way and there are others who spent some time wearing bigger shoes, but then they were able to reuse the ones they already had.
