Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: Help With Morning Sickness

Question:
I'm 31 years old and 8 weeks pregnant - first time. For the last week I have had 24 hour nausea. It keeps me awake at night and makes me gag when I eat. I am taking vitamin B6 and ginger. I eat small meals every few hours. I am always burping and always tired. Nothing seems to help me. It is really driving me nuts and making me depressed. I'm still trying to come to terms with being pregnant as this was rather unplanned so that doesn't help the mental situation. My husband is being very helpful (thank God). Can any one help me - or at least tell me when it will stop?

Answer:
God willing it will pass at 12 weeks. Eating 24-7 was the only thing that gave me any relief. And that wasnt much. I found lemonade and salty foods helped. Everyone will say something diffent but tinned fruit helped me. I can see you are in NZ so I can confidently say that you can get little pottles of fruit from the supermarket, they really helped. Apart from that, I can say it USUALLY passes from 12-14 weeks and I know how horrible it is. Nothing is guaranteed to help, unfortunately. It will probably go away towards the end of the first trimester - I was starting to feel a bit better by 12 weeks and felt a lot better by 13 weeks. Less positively, at 8 weeks I still was not at the worst point (that was about 10 weeks). Everyone's different though. You may find it helpful to carry around snacks of e.g. crisps or something salty like that, and eat a few every time you feel like it - I found that eating every few hours was not enough, and I found that for me most of the time, salty helped. You don't say whether you're actually vomiting a lot or just feeling sick - if there's a danger that you're getting dehydrated, do see a medical professional, because under those circumstances it's worth seriously considering taking drugs to help. I know how you feel. I had nausea from week 7 through about week 13 - but then it just magically went away and I felt pretty much great after that. But while I had it, it was terrible - just feeling nauseous constantly, like I had a permanent case of car sickness or a stomach bug. Yuck. Luckily I didn't have too much vomiting (maybe once-twice a week). The main thing that I found that helped was lemon. I'd cut up a lemon into wedges and suck on them. They instantly made the nausea go away, at least for a little while. Also, those sour candies (the kind that are like gummy bears but coated in citric acid powder) really helped. I carried those around for when I couldn't get to a lemon fast enough!