Summer Bostock developed a painful rash that covered her entire body when she was pregnant.
The mum says she first noticed she had red marks on her body two months into her first pregnancy.
‘It came on almost instantly,’ she tells The Healthy Mummy. ‘I remember noticing a few really red stretch marks and then within a few days I had so many, and the itchiness was getting crazy.’
Summer went online to research what her rash could be and went to her doctor, who confirmed it was PUPPPs.
PUPPPs stands for Pruritic Urticarial Papules and Plaques of Pregnancy. Around one in every 150 people are affected by it throughout pregnancy.
“One night, when I was 37 weeks pregnant, I was in so much pain I was in the bath trying to calm it down,” she says. “I ended up screaming to my husband because I needed a bucket to be sick, it was so severe.”
Summer was given steroid cream to help with the discomfort, but nothing worked. Doctors concluded her rash was so severe, she needed to be induced.
“As soon as my son was delivered via c-section after being induced, the rash faded immediately,” she says. “It did take a couple of days for the rash to go down completely, but it was such a massive relief straight away as soon as it went down.”
Summer went on to have two more sons – luckily she didn’t suffer from PUPPPs for her other pregnancies.