I don’t expect anyone to have been in this precise situation, but I’ll be doing a transplant run this week which will involve taking the chopper from the helipad on the hospital roof to the private airport [we mostly use corporate jets for transplant procurements-- they get a big tax writeoff, and we get to take cushy private jets!]. Does anyone know what altitude is safe in pregnancy to ascend to in a non-pressurized aircraft? It would probably be roughly the same as mountaineering, right?
Woah wild! That sounds like fun. I don’t know about short-term altitude exposure, but I’ve heard that women who live in mountainous regions have better blood flow to their placentas and uteruses, resulting in stronger pregnancies. [name]How[/name] does it work with the orthostatic hypotension? If pregnant women tend toward thinner blood, then doesn’t it mean that you gals are more efficient at oxygenation? I guess it must be offset by the O2 demand from the fetus…
You could always bring a small portable aerosol can of oxygen. I’ve seen them in the runner’s shop here.
Thanks emms. 
We have to climb over the [name]Santa[/name] [name]Monica[/name] mountains, that’s it. So if I go to the USGS website to look at the chain, it seems like the highest elevation in our flight path is only 3110 feet. If we clear them by even so much as 1000 feet, I’m still less than a mile up. So that should be fine.
In pregnancy your total oxygen carrying capacity increases (your RBC mass increases) but since your plasma volume increases at a higher rate, those RBCs are more dilute-- hence the lower hematocrit amongst pregnant women. That’s a dilutional anemia, not a real anemia, and as such it doesn’t cause any problems.
Well, I drove up to [name]Colorado[/name] around week 24. We were at about 8,000 feet elevation and I had no problems. Not sure about flying though. When I was doing some research, most sites just warned against going above 10,000 ft. And, of course, to watch for signs of altitude sickness. I’m fairly used to going up to the mountains, so that might have helped some. I hope your trip goes well!
As expected we both lived, and someone got a brand-new pancreas out of the excursion.
Very, very rad!
[name]Glad[/name] you were able to do it and glad somebody got a new working organ! I am seeing this late, but, my [name]SIL[/name] flew a lot during her pregnancy and the only issue was the smells in the airplane getting to her.