Nausea (or lack thereof)

Before I got pregnant, I prepared myself for the worst nausea and vomiting (N/V). As a midwife, I’ve obviously seen varying levels of N/V. For myself, I expected the worst because I have such terrible motion sickness. Anytime I get on a boat with serious waves, I lose my lunch. So I thought that would transfer over to pregnancy.
I was wrong.

I have not had a day of sickness. Maybe a tiny bout of nausea here and there, but mostly that’s associated with not eating or being on the subway. So yeah, no morning sickness for this girl.
Of course in the early stages, I was actually nervous about this lack. Most people attribute N/V to surging levels of HCG and healthy pregnancy. I think there is one study that actually says N/V is related to intelligence in children. Many people feel that nausea is a good sign because it reminds them they are still pregnant and things are okay. So when you don’t have that (or really anything besides some breast tenderness/swelling), you kind of start to think about it.

Most of the time, I felt fine about it and often would forget I was pregnant (kind of). But occasionally I’d have moments of panic being like, “is it in there?”. Once, at about 7.5 weeks, I was at the hospital and actually snuck a sonogram machine into an empty triage room and checked to see the heartbeat (yes I found it and it was there). I can’t wait til I’m “out” at the hospital and I can ask that nurse if she remembers that night and wondered what I was up to.

As I moved through the first trimester acting quite normally (exercise routine the same, etc), I frequently reminded myself that no sickness was a blessing. I am happy to report I was able to continue to exercise at least 4-5 times per week with very little change to my routine. I was able to eat normally and healthy (as healthy as I usually am which I’ll admit could be better).

So many people can’t exercise or eat like that in their first trimesters and really beat themselves up for it. I am grateful for the easy first trimester that I was blessed with having. As a midwife who can often work long hours and overnight, it was especially helpful to not be sick all the time. I can’t even imagine having to throw up during the day at our tiny office, with people definitely starting to wonder. I am pretty sure none of our patients suspects a thing.
Midwife note: N/V in pregnancy is quite common, even though I didn’t have it. So many (the majority actually) of women do have some degree of nausea and many have some vomiting.
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What can you do to keep it at bay? Well, there’s lots of suggestions out there and here’s some top choices.

• Ginger - tea, candy, actual ginger. Ginger is known to help with sickness. Make sure whatever you have has real ginger in it.
• Peppermint - candy, tea, etc. Also good to carry around to smell to help with strong odors.
• Eating small, frequent meals. This could mean eating every 2 hours for some women.
• Eat crackers or something similar first thing in the morning before getting out of bed
• Drink separately from eating. Sometimes drinking during a meal can stimulate a gag reflex
• Brushing teeth can trigger the gag reflex. This is usually worst in the morning, after eating, so try to plan around that.
• Seabands/motion sickness bands - acupressure bands that push on a point on your wrist to help with motion sickness
• Vitamin B6 - 50mg twice daily
  • Diclegis - a prescription form of vitamin b6 and an antihistamine. This really works well for some women. Unfortunately insurance coverage is sometimes spotty, but can usually be covered if the provider office makes the call to insurance.

If your N/V is getting severe or you can’t keep food/liquid down for prolonged periods of time, please contact your provider to discuss options that are best for you.