Severe Morning Sickness - Help!

I was very much the same with both my pregnancies thus far. Sorry! Its no fun! :( One thing that REALLY helped for me was eating baby dill pickles constantly. Sounds weird, but it seriously worked! Hubby would bring me one in bed and as long as I was keepimg something in my tummy all day long the pickles really helped with the nausea and throwing up! Good luck!

I had morning sickness 3 out of my 4 pregnancies. For me it only lasted until my second trimester but it was a miserable few weeks. A few things helped me. Vanilla milkshakes and lifesavers (wintergreen ). Hope you can find something that works for you. And hopefully it will pass soon.

R.,

I suffered with nausea and chronic vomiting daily for the first 4-5 months and then just sporadic times through the 6th. It's horrible, and I am so sorry that you are going through this. I don't think there is a magic bullet that will work for everyone, so you are going to have to try different foods until you find something that's acceptable. I do know that I and several other women with this problem could eat a McDonald's quarter pounder w cheese but nothing else on it (no pickles ketchup etc). I found that on my own, but when I asked my father who is an OB/Gyn, he said some of his patients told him the same thing. I personally know of 4 other women who told me that McDonalds worked through their nausea. I felt guilty about eating it because it was "bad for me" but Dad said calories at this point are the most important. Also, he said basically as long as you are getting your vitamin down, you can pretty much live on bread and water and the baby will still grow. The baby physiologically has priority over you and will deplete your body of nutrition before it goes without. So, I pretty much tried to eat if I could during the day, and if it didn't work, then I defaulted to McDonalds for dinner to try to keep my calories up. I lost 20 lbs in the first 4 months.

As far as things that helped me, I found I could eat sour things like plain yogurt and pineapple. I'm at 8 months now and still cannot do things like tomatoes though. Also, I found that chewing on candied ginger can help (sometimes at Trader Joe's but otherwise you can get it in the spice aisle at the grocery store). Preggie Pops (or Drops if you don't want to walk around with a lollipop stick hanging out of your mouth) gave some minor relief. Natal B sour apple lozenges were a little more effective instantaneously, but didn't last as long. Both are available at Babies R US. Also at Babies R Us was a good gummy pre-natal that I could actually keep down. You don't need to worry as much about iron until late 2nd trimester, and that this usually the element in prenatals that can make you puke or increase your constipation.

Regarding the drugs...ok I will admit that I tried all of them, and really NOTHING was super, but since I am a surgeon who prescribes all of these things post-op for patients, I decided to try them all when I really got desperate. Here's how they each work:

1. Reglan-It's not that often prescribed in morning sickness, but initially this was my go-to med. It increases the propulsion of the GI tract and helps things move along. One of the proposed biggest culprits of morning sickness is the effect of progesterone on bowel. It basically slows it was down and doesn't keep things moving. This allows the bowel /stomach to swell like a water balloon, and that mechanical stretch can be painful and nauseating. Your body will cause you to get rid of the contents, ie puke. Supposedly the evolutionary idea behind the work of progesterone is that is slows the transit of food through the GI tract and gives your body every chance to extract nutrients out before it hits the large intestine and becomes waste. To me, the effect was vomiting everything I ate, avoidance of food as well as severe constipation. Reglan wasn't a magic bullet,. but it did make the first significant dent in starting to get things under control for me.

2. Zofran/Kytril/Anzemet/anything generic that ends in -setron-These are a newer and sometimes more expensive kind of antiemetic that work centrally in your brain helping dampen the nausea signal coming from your gut so that you don't recognize it as much. These are totally safe in pregnancy and most patients will tell you that this is "the best." When I was in medical school, Zofran was so expensive, you could only prescribe it in the hospital if a patient didn't get relief from anything else. Zofran helped (not cured) things for me in months 4-5 are the slow motility problems were less prevalent and reglan wasn't working so well. The biggest bonus that I see with it is that there are no sedative side effects.

3. Phenergan-This is a cheap, widely available older anti-emetic that works centrally in the brain as well. It has some properties that are similar to benadryl, so you will get sedated from this. Some patients love it, some don't notice any effect. Almost everyone gets really drowsy. I did use this to try to get some sleep at night when I was too nauseated to sleep. It sorta helped, but it certainly wasn't awesome. Again, this one is OK to prescribe during pregnancy, but I don't recommend taking it any time other than when you are at home and not doing anything.

4. Sleep aids-Some people will swear by unisom or tylenol PM or whatever esp at night to get some rest and quell nausea. Don't waste your money, and read the back of the packages. All that Unisom is is really expensive benadryl. I think something upwards of 90% of over-the-counter sleep aids are just diphenhydramine (generic Benadryl), including tylenol PM, unisom, any allergy medicine with PM formulation and all of the cold remedies that advertise "so-you-can-rest-medicines." Benadryl did help me sleep for a while, but the best thing to do is buy the store brand diphenhydramine.

Hope that helps. Good luck. It will get better.

Eat protein before going to bed this is suppose to help. Some peanut butter and crackers at bed time. Eat small portions. This should pass as your progress in your pregnancy. :( I hope it goes away quickly.

I am a certified Acupressurist who has heard that the sea sickness bands sold in drugstores and travel stores work wonders. The button under the elastic pushes on an Acupressure point that relieves the nausea. Put them on, and leave them on. My mom left hers on for a week or more before they relieved three months of dizziness and vertigo that did not respond to any medication.

Energetically speaking, nausea and vomiting are energy going up in the body, that should be going down. Whenever you can, rest your hands on the inside of your knees/thighs to help the energy move down.

Good Luck. I feel for you. Before I learned energy work, I suffered through five months of nausea and revulsion to food 24 hours a day, during my second pregnancy. This too will pass.
T.

I was really sick with our second child and had some luck with the Preggie Pops. I got them at Motherhood Maternity but I'm not sure that chain is still around. You might see if you can find them online. I remember buying a whole case of them, I needed them so much!

Another thing to try are the motion sickness wrist bands. You can find those at most drugstores. They're anti-nausea and may be worth a try. They took the edge off for me.

Good luck!

Hyperemesis

Check out
Helpher.org

Read into it a little bit. Not sure how far along you are but the longer you go without help the hard and more sick you will get. I learned the hard way. Anyhow I learned that mixing liquid wih solid was a huge NO, NO. I lived off of IV fluids for 6 months to keep myself hydrated. With that being said hydration is the key but if you can't keep liquids in you need to try another route like IV bags. I had to have a little help right away from 4 weeks to 6 weeks I was throwing up over 10 times a day. but after that IV fluids and not drinking anything into my stomach is what helped the most. No harm in IV fluids. It is very rare but can happen to any one hyperemsis eve if you have had healthy/easy pregnancies before. i had no idea what I was dealing with until 8 weeks and it was BAD so I feel for you dearly and I hope you find something that works and do hope that you don't even have hyperemesis. I have lots of thoughts and Ideas for you if you want them You can PM me but remember that everyone is different and ignore the best you can any comments that are geared towards it not being that BAD cause it can be very very bad and hard to live with. Huge HUGS!

As someone already posted, there's a relatively rare disorder/condition called hyperemesis gravidarum, which is severe morning sickness that DOES put both the baby and the mother at risk. Not sure how far along you are or how long this has been going on for you, but I had this condition and if you have it, you need to be treated. For the first 8 weeks of my pregnancy, I just thought I had bad morning sickness, so I tried everything mentioned here -- motion sickness bands, ginger, watermelon, cinnamon toast, protein, wintogreen lifesavers, applejacks, stool softener, avoiding fats, everything anyone mentioned I tried. But nothing worked...I puked all the time and everywhere. So my OB had me try 3 different oral drugs, then different combinations of them, and still nothing worked. After 3 separate trips to the Emergency Room for IV hydration (my husband dragged me there each time because I couldn't keep even ice chips down for 2 days), they did some blood tests and admitted me to the hospital because my electrolyte levels were a mess and I was putting the baby and myself at risk. It was then I learned that Zofran (a drug normally given to chemotherapy patients to ease their nausea/vomiting) delivered via IV actually worked for me (orally it did nothing). So I spent the remainder of my pregnancy with an IV attached to me, delivering fluids, vitamins and Zofran. Then I could eat some things some of the time. It was enough to give us a perfectly healthy baby in the end, so it was all worth it. I tell you all this because it seems almost everyone has morning sickness for a while in the beginning and everyone has a different trick for muddling through it. BUT, if nothing works for you, you can't let yourself get dehydrated for too long. You've got to seek medical treatment. On that helpher.org website, you can read about the Harvard PhD who is trying to find the cause of this disease because she didn't seek treatment soon enough and lost her baby. I don't mean to be Debbie Downer about this, but I just want you to really take care of yourself because I had the tendency to not worry about it too much and if I'd gone with my instinct (rather than my "worry-wart" husband's) I may have lost our child. Hang in there! I hope you find a trick to get you through this without drugs and IVs!!! Best wishes!

Wow, I done some good research on this and no one answered with what I found in my research! OK, morning sickness is mostly low blood sugar. You HAVE to eat a little something every 2 hours, and you have to find things that agree with you - I did oranges and orange juice and cold cereals with milk and juicy juice, my friends did pasta, everyone I know loved fruity mentos and "milk and cereal bars" (they are by general mills I think in the granola bar section of store, bar made out of dry cereal with a frosting in the middle). Keep food with you at all times - bars and hard candies, juice boxes. Take your prenatal vitamin around 3:00 pm when your blood sugar usually takes a big drop. Ask your OB about a prenatal that could be better for you - there is 1 that is a perscription and is a bright light blue pill. It will subside later in your pregnancy, most around 3-4 months, but I lasted 5-6. Even if you're throwing up, some of the nutrients get into your blood stream and do good... You may even want to try other things to eat before getting out of bed than saltines (I even started earlier and had a bowl of cereal at 4 am when I got up to go to the bathroom before going back to bed! Hang in there!

I am just coming out of severe morning sickness. I did get dehydrated and had to go to urgent care 3 x's for IV fluids. -The whole period lasted 6-8 weeks and was just miserable.

With the vitamin B6 you should take 50 mg 3xs daily and *half* a unisom at night before going to bed. (If you take a whole one you'll probably be groggy the next day-the pharmacist warned me about this and was right)

The anti-nausea prescription didn't really work for me, but I do know it has really helped other people.

Staying hydrated is the most important -I think I got into a hole of getting worse and worse b/c I was hungry and dehydrated which just made me feel worse.

Maybe peppermint tea would work? Soda? Sometimes I could drink coke when I couldn't drink anything else. Not great, but better than nothing. I found I've just had to try different things -sometimes one thing worked, sometimes another.

You can try accupuncture. I was just about to try it, but started feeling better.

Good luck. If you're feeling very bad you do need to call your doctor/nurse to see if you need IV fluids.

J.

Nothing really helped me the first time around (I pretty much vomited everything I tried to eat/drink and ended up with an IV within a couple of days of it starting). I had to be on medication to keep anything down, but it made me a zombie and I hated it, but it was better than throwing up constantly. My midwives also gave me a vitamin B shot every few days and those helped immensely. The second time around I tried to be more strategic about it. I didn't take prenatals because the first time they are what started my tail-spin. I also found chewing gum helped (bubble-mint). But, I still ended up on Zofran the second time, it's a much better medication (which I know you don't want, but if you end up needing it, it's the way to go). I was still nauseous, but I didn't vomit.

I guess I'm just saying that being that sick is awful and if you end up on medication because you can't stay hydrated you're in good company and I have two beautiful boys I think because of medication. I don't normally take any medication. I had unmedicated births, but I think I literally might have died with baby 1 without medication because nothing, nothing, nothing stayed down.

I drank ginger ale every morning. I just sipped it all morning long.
Also, it could be your prenatal vitamins. One that I took made the m.s. ten times worse so my Dr. gave me a different one to try. I was still a little nauseated but it was manageable.

You poor thing! The only thing that helped me - way back when - was a few triscuit crackers and a bit of cheese - I liked munster (sp?). I was commuting to NY city at the time and if I didn't have those few crackers with cheese, I'd be hurling over the train platform. Also - the prenatal vitamins NEVER agreed with me and I stopped taking them (with my doctor's approval) and the morning sickness disappeared like magic.

When I was pregnant with twins, the morning sickness was Out of Control!!! I went to a Bath and Body Works and got their Orange Ginger shower gel. It energized me and invigorated my appetite.

That and room-temperature Coke and chamomile tea with honey.

There is nothing comparable to the constant nausea and vomiting of pregnancy. I was the same way from 5 to 17 weeks. I chewed gum and sucked on hard candy, but nothing really gave me total relief except Phenegran suppositiories which I would take at night since they made me sleepy (you can take them vaginally so there's no burning). Keep your doctor informed of what is going on. I know it's so discouraging, but thankfully it won't be forever.

Don't know if it will work, but chewing gum really helped me. It was the chewing and swallowing (saliva) that staved off the nausea, but I couldn't handle much in my stomach a lot of the time.

Also make sure you are not getting dehydrated. Dehydration can actually make nausea/vomiting worse, plus can be very dangerous for you and your baby. Drink little bits of water throughout the day when you can. Or try gatorade, it sometimes is easier for the stomach to handle, and the sugar and electrolytes can help you.

Don't be afraid to ask the doctor about it, too. If you are getting dehydrated, then you do need to do something about the sickness, even if it means medication.

Good luck! Hope you feel better soon!