At the end of my pregnancy I developed quite a lot of swelling. My blood pressure spiked and I had some weird symptoms (I was afraid I was going to have a stroke). I had lots of urine and blood testing, which was all normal. With the swelling I developed neuropathies and Carpal tunnel like symptoms in both hands. After giving birth the swelling went down and the numbness and burning in my hands (very slowly) decreased. Then a couple of weeks before my first period my hands and feet (more on the right than left) became tight and kind of burned/itched and the numbness started to slowly return to my fingers like it had during pregnancy. My family doc wasn't much help (he thought it was stress the first time I saw him. The next time he did a ton of blood work just to be safe- which all came back normal- and gave me some water pills to help with fluid retention. I have since then stoppeed taking them as they didn't seem to make a huge difference)and I am in a sort of rural area. Therefore I started to problem solve on my own. Could this all be related to water retention? It seems to spike a week or two before my period, then lessen after my period and kind of cycles. The good thing is that it has gotten less intense with each cycle, but I still worry. Is this something serious or just water retention as I hypothesize? Is this something that others experience? Maybe someone more experienced with womens issues would be familiar with this story and say "ah yes, its just this..." Thanks for your time.