There has been some research suggesting that tinnitus can develop from hormonal changes, which may be the case for you, and it might resolve after you give birth. (Also, once you have a baby, you may be too exhausted to care as much about the tinnitus, and your focus will likely shift so strongly to your baby that the tinnitus might lose its intensity.)
I experience OCD symptoms, with tinnitus and health concerns as a main theme, and I constantly have to remind myself that what I value is more important than what I fear may trigger an OCD or tinnitus spiral. Just like tinnitus, OCD can pull you away from things you love to do and people you love to spend time with. That is why I encourage you to keep singing and doing what you enjoy. In my experience, my stress over tinnitus was worse than the tinnitus itself. I still have tinnitus, but I no longer stress about it the way I used to, though I check here now and then in hopes of seeing a miracle cure.
As for medication, Sertraline is considered safe during pregnancy (though I am not a doctor). In my case, however, it actually increased the volume of my tinnitus at the therapeutic dose. I switched to a smaller dose and my tinnitus went back down. I felt great on it during the luteal phase—no PMS—but it disrupted my sleep too much, so I eventually discontinued it.
I hope you find support where you live, such as new mom classes and get-togethers. Nonprofits in your area may offer this kind of support group. Congratulations, and I hope your tinnitus improves or even goes away!
P.S. I would not worry at all about a door slamming behind you. That happens to me all the time. While startling, I just forget about it. I take magnesium daily to support ear health, try to include enough antioxidants in my diet, and avoid ototoxic drugs when possible. I have to believe that is good enough, because I want to devote my energy to other things.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and reply to my post, and for sharing your experience. I really appreciate it. I'm hopeful that my tinnitus might calm down once my pregnancy is over next month. It has felt worse since August, but I'm also 30 weeks now, so I know hormones may be playing a big role.
For now, I've decided not to take an SSRI and am focusing on weekly counseling. I had an MRI last week since mine is mostly unilateral, and the plugs they gave me didn't seal well, though I also had headphones. It was loud, but only 20 minutes, and while I think I've had a bit of a spike, I'm hopeful it won't last. I keep reminding myself that people get MRIs daily, doors slam often, and these are just loud parts of life. I carry Loop Engage and Flares Calmer plugs with me for peace of mind, but I don't want to let fear take over.
I completely spiraled and obsessed over tinnitus for the first three to four months, but in the last month, I've really tried to calm down, stop panicking daily, and remind myself that good things are coming. I know forums often have a lot of scary posts, but I try to avoid those, and I truly believe that in time I'll get better. Even if tinnitus never fully goes away, I know I'll have happier days again.
And thank you for encouraging me to keep singing. I've been humming and singing softly more and more each day, and it makes me happy to think about singing for my baby, even if just softly for now.
Thanks again for your kindness. Do you mind if I ask, are you a parent? If so, how did you handle the louder moments of raising kids while also living with tinnitus?
100% true. Sound therapy is great for distracting yourself, but if your tinnitus is reactive, the only real fix is a quiet environment.
@DimLeb, you are so lucky yours went away. I wish we knew how and why. I'm at the ten-year mark with reactive tinnitus and can't walk past a fan without it starting. Sometimes it goes back down after a few hours, and sometimes it just gets louder and stays elevated. Sound makes it worse.
On the other hand, if tinnitus is tonal or comes from deep within the ear and sounds like music or electric buzzing, sound therapy is very effective. You can mask that type of tinnitus with other sounds and follow the old-school advice given by ENTs and audiologists: "Turn on a fan," and so on. But reactive tinnitus is a subset of hyperacusis, and sound makes it worse.
It also seems almost impossible to sing professionally with severe reactive tinnitus. If not impossible, it would at least be painful. Severe reactive tinnitus can be so loud that you sometimes feel it vibrate.
Thanks for your feedback. I checked into the postpartum medication you mentioned, but it was pulled from the market late last year. So still no real pharmaceutical help yet—but like many of us, I'm following the Susan Shore Device closely and plan to watch the Tinnitus Quest Q&A with Dr. Shore on October 13 to learn more about it.
My reactive tinnitus isn't extreme, but it flares with AC, fans, wind, and even talking. It's multi-tonal, which bothers me more than the reactivity. I've cut back on in-ear sound therapy and instead keep natural background sound around me, never silence. Quiet helps, though I avoid loud spots like busy restaurants when I can.
At 5.5 months in, I'm still figuring out what works best. I try to live normally, keep Loops and Flares on hand, and recently started 600mg NAC—though I know it's more for protection than treatment. Being 30 weeks pregnant, I'm not sure if my worries about it getting worse are from the tinnitus itself worsening or just my pregnancy changes. I just hope it gets easier with time, not harder.
Interesting, these last two posts from
@BuzzyBee and
@MindOverMatter.
They present completely opposing viewpoints on reactive tinnitus. What is even more interesting is that both come from experienced sufferers.
When tinnitus sufferers cannot agree on their experiences and how to manage them, it is easier to understand why doctors find it difficult to take the condition seriously.
Yes, I agree there's clearly no one-size-fits-all approach to reactive tinnitus. I've changed my strategy a few times in the past 5.5 months and still feel unsure about what I'm doing. Early on I over-protected with earplugs (which seemed to worsen hyperacusis). I tried in-ear sound devices next — they felt like a placebo and may have increased reactivity. The back-and-forth of plugging, staying in quiet, and different sound exposures became overwhelming.
Now I'm trying to stop freaking out and just live as normally as possible. It's not a method, but it's less exhausting than constantly switching strategies.
I've seen four ENTs and been disappointed by each of them — I trust the advice and experience from this forum far more than any doctor I've seen so far.
Meg,
Tinnitus during pregnancy affects
one in three women. One could say it is par for the course, and in the overwhelming majority of cases it goes away on its own after the pregnancy is over. The technical term for "goes away on its own" is "spontaneous remission," which might be useful if you want to find scientific papers on the topic.
Speaking of spontaneous remissions, this is
very common with tinnitus. This should lead to a re-evaluation of the success rate claimed by Treble Health. The proper thing for them to do would be to
compare their success rate to the rate of spontaneous remissions. They probably know why they will not report such statistics.
One must also consider the possibility that "sound therapy" can make things worse and could reduce the chances of a spontaneous recovery. I completely understand the panic and the intense desire to just do something to make it all go away, but I also believe I made my own situation worse by trying to heal myself with this. My ears needed rest, first and foremost.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, I believe you should think long and hard about whether you should leave Indiana for the duration of your pregnancy. Thanks to the
badly written abortion ban, healthcare for pregnant women is severely limited where you live, and you mentioned that you have a high-risk pregnancy. The maternal mortality rate in Indiana is
one of the highest in the United States, and five times higher than in my own country. According to a paper from Indiana University (
link to PDF), 77 percent of these deaths would have been preventable.
Take care.
I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. In the beginning, I hoped my sudden unilateral tinnitus was pregnancy related, but since it started around seven weeks and has only grown more bothersome over the last five and a half months, it seems more idiopathic. Still, I haven't lost hope that it may at least ease postpartum, even if pregnancy isn't the root cause.
I've also come to agree that in-ear devices may have been doing more harm than good. My tinnitus is multi-tonal and reactive, so no soundscape really blended with it. Lately, I've shifted toward gentle exposure to natural sounds in daily life. I'm not overprotecting, but I do carry plugs and sometimes use Flares Calmer to soften sharper noises.
At five and a half months in, I still don't know the "formula," but I'm leaning on quiet environments, gentle exposure, and time. I've always believed time is a great healer.
As for Indiana, I hear your concerns and I share many of them. We only moved here in January, and I don't feel aligned with the politics or the maternal care situation. But with a high-risk pregnancy, I'm tied to the specialized clinic where I'm being closely monitored for the next nine weeks. Leaving isn't feasible right now, so, like with tinnitus, I just have to keep moving forward and hope for the best.
Member
.
). Looking back, I think I rushed into inner-ear device sound therapy too soon, hoping for relief when my auditory system wasn't ready. I didn't even know reactive tinnitus was possible or how exhausting it could be. Now, I try to use the devices only a few hours and spend the rest of the time by my open windows listening to the birds, going for walks, or playing light background music. I believe those natural sounds will be more restorative than constant synthetic tones.
