TikTok’s ‘Pregnancy Nose’ Videos, Explained
Rising public fascination with pregnancy-related body horror is showing how few of us know what to expect when we're expecting.
Health

There are impacts of pregnancy on the body that you expect—stretch marks, swollen feet, and morning sickness. And then, as TikTokers are increasingly discovering together, there’s a host of other, lesser-known side effects, including worsened vision, hair loss, new moles and dark spots, losing your teeth from calcium deficiency, and—per a viral TikTok trend making the rounds this first week of 2023—“pregnancy nose.”
Pregnant people have lately been sharing before-and-after-style videos of their faces, specifically revealing how pregnancy made their noses larger. To be clear, pregnancy nose—or pregnancy rhinitis—is real. Pregnancy in general drastically impacts hormones and blood flow, and pregnancy rhinitis occurs as a result of increased blood flow to mucus membranes across your body, resulting in swelling in these areas. Because noses have mucus membranes, pregnant people’s noses can become enlarged during pregnancy and are also susceptible to prolonged congestion.
In one before-and-after video, TikToker Alex Jacobson, @alexjoelenejacobson, reveals her significantly wider-appearing nose at the end of her pregnancy, explaining that she “did not gain any weight during my pregnancy,” and when she checked into the hospital, she “was 15 pounds lighter” than before her positive pregnancy test. “It was not from weight gain, but purely from swelling and all of the water I was retaining,” Jacobsen says in the video. “Between all of my break-outs and how swollen my face was, my face hurt so bad.”
Dr. Rachel Neal, a Georgia-based OBGYN and fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health, told Jezebel she’s treated many patients who experience “pretty benign, pretty harmless” changes like “pregnancy nose”—for example, “their cheeks will get a little bit bigger, or their nose will grow.” Neal is glad to see TikTok trends provide people with more information about what they can expect upon becoming pregnant. “Pregnancy changes your body in so many ways, it’s tough to imagine a scenario where I, as a physician, would be able to prepare somebody for every possible thing that could happen,” she said.
Other examples of “pregnancy nose”-Tok:
@cailaaustina