BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Pregnancy How did you cope with Morning Sickness?

My latest article features several tips for surviving through morning sickness.

Are you dealing with morning sickness right now?
What has been helpful to you?

Angela <><

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art35731.asp

I'm not dealing with morning sickness now. It was years ago, but
jelly beans helped me. Also a product called Emitrex (just a glucose solution) helped. I kept a bottle of it on hand and took a swig as needed.

Make sure your doctor thinks this is ok for you! Too much glucose could cause trouble for some people, especially someone with diabetes or borderline diabetes. Apparently, my body needed it at that time.

cela - you're right! that is one of the reasons why eating every hour a little something can be so helpful!

Angela <><

The smell of food cooking was just too much when my morning sickness was at its worst. I had to be out of the house when meals were being prepared. It would have been helpful to eat takeout food, but that was just too expensive and way beyond our budget; especially when you are talking about three full meals a day for three or four months.

My husband ate cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch and (bless him) he cooked the evening meal while I took my daily walk and aired the house out as best he could before I came back home.

Mild exercise, avoiding certain odors and bland foods helped me successfully fight the nausea most of the time.

It has been along time for me too, but I remember I had a box of crackers (saltines) that I kept with me. I was gestaional diabetic also but it was okay to nibble on a cracker when queasy.

Mary Caliendo
Tea Editor

Oh she reminded me that's why I don't like eggs! I could not stand the smell of them, and would get terribly sick when I would prepare them for breakfast! Yikes!

Mary Caliendo
Tea Editor

Saltines, then saltines w/ peanut butter.
Sweet tea & ginger ale.

& I was like Mary, I kept the saltines next to my bed - because jumping up in the morning was the first thing to set me off. Blood pressure dropped & nausea went up! So I would sit up slowly and nibble on a cracker.

I also stayed far away from anything greasy - that was sure to make me ill - even the smell of frying food would cause vomiting.

Oh, I forgot. My daughter discovered that prenatal vitamins gave her severe nausea. She tried a couple of different brands, then tried plain multi-vitamins. Nothing worked except just not taking vitamins at all. Her diet was extremely well-balanced, and the baby turned out to be a VERY healthy one, near the top of the charts for length and weight. Her experience made me wonder if my morning sickness would have gone away if I had skipped the vitamins.

If the vitamins make you throw up, you couldn't really be getting much benefit from them (or any food that makes the "return" trip either), right?

I kept raw sliced potato beside the bed and crackers. Before I even lifted my head off the pillow I sucked on the potato slice and munched at least one cracker. Worked for me.

Yes...it can really help to eat RIGHT AWAY in the morning.

Morning sickness was an all day thing for the majority of both of my pregnancies. I essentially lived on dry cereal and crackers for a large portion of the day, chased down with ginger tea. With doctor's approval, I dumped the prenatal vitamins and switched to taking 2 Flintstone's Complete w/ Calcium (the chewable, fruit flavored kids vitamins).

Lynn - this is a great point. It is known that high levels of iron in the prenatals can trigger nausea.

Some mothers get relief by cutting their prenatals in half (literally in half, not half as many but cut a pill in half and take one half with breakfast and one half with lunch).

Also - if you can get your supplements wiht the calcium mineral complex SEPERATE you can take those at night before bed to help you sleep better and still meet your calcium requirements even if you can't take your full prenatal supplements.

To keep up with your iron try cooking your food in a cast iron skillet and using a liquid iron supplement like Floridex.

Angela <><