“Morning” Sickness – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly!

I am NOT pregnant! Nor am I looking to GET pregnant now! But when I think about being pregnant one big thing sticks out to me. “Morning” Sickness. I use quotations around “Morning” because for me it was more like a 24 hour, 7 days a week sickness. Ugh. It really really sucked. And anyone close to me during my pregnancies can tell you how much I detested it!!

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was actually physically ill (vomiting) and nauseous for the first 19 weeks. At least then when I was able to get sick, I felt a bit better. Even just smells of certain foods grossed me out, and made me run to the bathroom! I was prescribed Diclectin and thought “Nah, I don’t need this, I am strong…”  blah blah blah. There were certain foods that I found helped me get rid of the nausea: sour Starbursts, Granny Smith Apples, and sucking on mints. But, I actually LOST weight the first trimester, so the doctor told me he really recommended me take the Diclectin, so I did and it helped! And by 19 weeks I no longer needed it and went on to thoroughly enjoy the rest of my pregnancy. Well except the swelling, heat, going over due….but I digress!

Then comes my pregnancy with my son. This is still quite fresh in my mind since it is still only about 2 years ago! I LOVE my wee man, but my pregnancy for him, not so much. At about 6 weeks, the “Morning” sickness commenced. It lasted right up till the end of almost 42 weeks of my wonderful pregnancy! So I immediately asked for Diclectin this time around. No wasting time, especially when having a 3 year old at home to look after, there was no time for nausea or vomiting. Thankfully the vomiting was very rare!! Woot! BUT…the nausea, ya THAT was constant!

I ended up relying a lot on ginger-ale, toast and butter, and tomato juice – these few things seemed to settle ok in my stomach. Smells – especially meats cooking, really turned my stomach upside down. Even the sound of some food being eaten! I know, WTH!? But seriously, the sound of a sausage being cut, then eaten, plus the smell of it….please show me to the toilet! (It still grosses me out even now!) My Diclectin dosage was upped and still the nausea pursued. It did however make me even more drowsy than I already was. And being home with my daughter, I couldn’t just curl up and sleep whenever I wanted. The Diclectin wasn’t helping and with the added sleepy feeling, I stopped taking it. So I was almost 42 weeks along when my son came, and all the way to the end, nausea plagued!

So why “The Good” in my title? I had a miscarriage previous to my pregnancies (see October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day, and Today, I Share My Story) so the constant pregnancy symptom was reassuring (weird, I know!). I also didn’t gain too much weight while I was pregnant because I just really didn’t want to eat since I felt horrible most of the time! The “Bad” and the “Ugly”….well I think I described that above!

So how about you? Were you nausea laden during your pregnancy? What did you find helped? What made it worse? Any tips or words of advice for anyone going through “Morning Sickness” now!?

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