HOW TO SURVIVE MORNING SICKNESS

Morning sickness is VILE and I should know, I had it incredibly badly for 14 weeks (week 6-19) and at week 22 I am sadly still experiencing it, but finally only a little bit. I felt debilitated for 14 weeks and cried A LOT! I just couldn’t believe that “the miracle of life” was causing me quite so much Hell. I learnt a lot in that time and worked out some survival tips that I want to share with you. You will of course have bad days but you will have some good days too. Just make sure you make the most of those good days. Even though you want to have an amazing good day, do not over do it. On my first non-sick day I jumped for joy and went for a run, did house work, met up with friends…the next day I was sicker than ever, all because of sheer exhaustion.

On my bad days I was throwing up anywhere between 2-7 times. Some days I couldn’t even have a sip of water without being sick. I think if you are being sick 7 or more times a day regularly you should probably phone your midwife just in case you have hyperemesis gravidarum (that is the morning sickness that Kate Middleton experienced and made a bit more widely known about). I am fairly sure I didn’t have this because the severity of my sickness went back and forth between unbearable and bearable. That being said I did speak to a nurse about my worries when I went for my 12 week scan and she said my hydration was ok but I should make sure I was taking a pregnancy vitamin in case I wasn’t getting enough vitamins with my newly limited diet (I had gone off pretty much all foods and only stomached potato rostis!). I started taking and am still taking these vitamins which have made my nails grow sooo long! (Bonus!) and as soon as I stopped being sick so much I made sure I upped my healthy food choices and consciously ate loads of dark greens to up my iron levels.
Just know that, one day this shall pass and you will have a bundle of joy in your arms…that’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Here are my top tips on how best to survive morning sickness.

FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD

Eat Eat Eat. Just keep eating, seriously! (of course, only if you can- some days I definitely couldn’t put food in my mouth and keep it there- I’m making up for that now though). I was in total disbelief when I read that regular eating was a good thing. When I have been sick in the past because of some illness, I wouldn’t want to go near food and you are often suggested to starve for 24 hours. Yet, when you have morning sickness it seems to be completely different. If you eat food, your body is preoccupied with digestion and it somehow helps nausea and sickness pass by or at least wane for a little bit. Find the perfect snacks that work for you. If I had even a penny for every time I was told to eat ginger biscuits I would be hundreds of pounds richer right now! Ginger really isn’t as good as people say when you are throwing up all the time, it burns coming back up!!! Maybe if you are solely suffering with nausea then ginger could work for you but for me when being sick, it was dreadful.

SLEEP IS GOOD

Of course wake up when you have to, but go to bed at a decent time. If you are sleepy and have the opportunity to go to bed, then do it because you are likely to be up a lot in the night for a wee or because of discomfort if you are at the beginning or end of your pregnancy. I found that I suffered with sickness mostly when I was tired. My best time to go to sleep was by 10pm and then to wake up 7/8am.

GET SOME AIR

I hated the smell of parts of my house. My bathroom upstairs, the kitchen and the downstairs toilet which is located through the toilet were all my nemesis. I couldn’t smell them without throwing up. This meant I couldn’t be in the kitchen at all for a really long time. I am insanely lucky that my hubby took over everything kitchen based. If he worked late I ordered a Deliveroo or Uber Eats as a treat to him so he didn’t have to cook or clean up. I began to feel insanely lazy but as soon as I tried to help and go in the kitchen, my head was down the toilet! I found that getting outside and away from the smells of my house often helped. I love going for a run but at my worst moments the jiggling up and down of running made me sick so I named my “runs” a jaunt instead, which was basically a run/walk and whatever I could manage really. My mental state was far better if I got a tiny bit of exercise.

FOOD & PRODUCTS THAT WORK

Here are a list of products and foods that worked for me when I was at my worst. My biggest recommendation that I can give you is to buy fragrance free beauty products such as body wash, hand wash and deo. I stayed away from perfume until last week! I also switched to an electric tooth brush so that I didn’t have such a big toothbrush in my mouth and didn’t have to brush back and forth so vigorously.
Here are the body wash and hand soap that I changed to in my house
• Fragrance Free body wash
• Fragrance Free hand soap
These are some of the foods that I managed to stomach:
Salt and Vinegar crisps, chewy sweets such a Haribo strawberries, M&S Percy Pigs and Skittles, potato rostis, peanut butter on toast, grapefruit, refrigerated red grapes, FROZEN grapes (yep, pop your grapes in the freezer and then when you eat them they are like little balls of grape sorbet).
Yet, anything that you throw seems to get scratched off the list very quickly!

Have you experienced morning sickness or are you currently going through it? If you are currently going through it, I really hope it gets better soon x