Pregnancy is the pelvic veins' stress test. To supply the uterus, the ovarian veins carry many times their usual blood flow — stretching to do it — while pregnancy hormones deliberately relax vessel walls. Most veins recover after birth. Some valves don't, and that's how pelvic congestion most often begins.
Veins that surfaced during pregnancy are the visible half of that story — and here's the counterintuitive part: they matter even if they faded after birth. Their appearance marked where the system was strained; fading means the surface pressure dropped, not necessarily that the valves recovered. In a woman with today's symptoms, "I had vulvar/leg veins in my pregnancies" is a meaningful line of history — especially when each pregnancy made things a little worse, another pattern our community reports constantly.
If you answered yes: include it in any appointment history, with the timing ("appeared in pregnancy two, mostly faded, symptoms stayed"). It helps a specialist connect your present pattern to its likely origin — and it's precisely the history the check's summary assembles for you.