Are you or someone you know suffering from morning sickness? Today I’m sharing 10 ways I’ve found to help ease that awful, all-day nausea!
I want to start off by saying I’m not a medical professional. These are just some ways that I’ve found to be helpful in easing my own morning sickness. If your morning sickness is severe, you may want to speak with your doctor about ways to help.
I think we can all agree that morning sickness is probably one of the worst side effects of pregnancy. I suffered from what I refer to as “all-day sickness” for about 10 weeks with my first pregnancy and sadly I experienced it once again with my second. If you are currently suffering or have in the past, you know there’s nothing that confines it to only the morning hours. The feeling, at least for me, stayed there all day long.
While there’s currently no cure for morning sickness, there are definitely ways you can help to ease that awful night and day feeling. Here are 10 ways I found to be helpful. Whenever I felt really (really) bad, I just tried to remind myself there was a reason for it and at the end, I’d have a sweet baby to snuggle.
1.Drink Fluids – We all know it’s important to stay hydrated while pregnant! If plain water doesn’t sound very appealing right now, try mixing it with some juice or fresh squeezed lemon juice. My personal favorites were lemonade, orange juice, sprite and ginger ale, when plain water just wasn’t going to do it. Don’t forget, foods like soup or fruit with a high water content (think watermelon!) help count towards your fluid intake too!
2. Anti-Nausea Wrist Bands – Have you seen these? They look like athletic wristbands but have a bead embedded on one side. It’s meant to push on a pressure point in your wrist, which relieves nausea. I used these off and on. While I didn’t find they completely removed the nausea, it took a little bit of the edge off when I felt really bad. I used a brand called Sea-Band Mama, found at CVS for about $15.00.
3. Sour Candies – Sour or lemon-flavored candies are great at making that mineral taste in your mouth go away and make you feel better. You can buy regular candies at the store or they even sell sour candies especially for pregnancy. I found some called Preggie Pop Drops at Babies ‘R Us for about $6.00. Of course, the nausea is really only gone while you’re sucking on the candy and while the taste lingers.
4. Flavored Lip Gloss – During my first pregnancy I had this awesome mint-flavored lip gloss, which really helped me feel better. I think it was the scent that really did it. Of course, the second time around I wasn’t able to find the exact type again. Experiment with scents and flavors, which might help do the same for you.
5. Distract Yourself – Whenever I was feeling a strong wave of nausea come over me, I’d immediately start thinking about baby names to take my mind off of it. Yes, in the first trimester it was a bit premature to go full on in baby-name mode, but I found this helped. Find something you can think about to distract yourself and use it when you don’t feel well.
6. Eat – While it sounds counter-intuitive to eat when you don’t feel well, I always felt better when I had food in my stomach. My go-to morning sickness foods were almost all carbs, mainly white bread and bagels, toasted with butter. Yes, far away from my normal wheat bread diet, but just getting food in my stomach was more important to me than trying to keep it super healthy.
7. Have 5-6 Mini-Meals – Instead of eating 3 large meals a day, I tried for about 6 smaller meals. I found I felt best if I ate something every 2-3 hours, so there was always something in my stomach. Not to mention, overloading your stomach with one big meal is never a good idea when you don’t feel well!
8. Call in the Troops – This isn’t the time to deny help from anyone. Call in friends, family and your hubby to help you out! This is even more important when you have other children at home. I am so thankful to those who came to help watch Emily, so I could rest and not have to worry about chasing around a 2-year old.
9. Grocery Pick-Up Service – Grocery shopping was one of my main nausea triggers, what with all of the different foods and smells throughout the store. However, it still needed to be done on a weekly basis. I was luckily able to have my husband do most of the shopping in the end, but my original plan was to use a grocery pick up service, like many of our local stores offer (Walmart, Giant Eagle, Kroger and more). This way the shopping can be done without having to step a foot into the store!
10. Rest – This is my number one tip! Nothing was better for me than rest and nothing makes the time go by faster if I could fall asleep. Obviously, this is probably the hardest one to get too, especially if you work full time or have other children at home. Try to get extra rest where you can though, whether it be sleeping in a bit in the morning, taking a nap in the afternoon or going to bed early.
