Morning Sickness

I had really bad morning sickness during both my pregnancies. I think I survived on lemons and 7-up. Taking the fizzy 7-up however made me feel extremely guilty but I couldn't help sipping the sugar heavy nutritionally empty drink loaded with preservatives.

I wonder why they call it "morning" sickness when it asails you all day and all night long. There was no relieve, totally no respite from the feeling of being sick. It was with me 24/7 even during sleep.

It was particularly bad for my first pregnancy. It lasted for 4 whole months. One myth of pregnancy is that morning sickness is worse if you are carrying a girl and perhaps that is true because my first baby turned out to be a girl. For the second it was equally bad but of a shorter duration, perhaps 2-3 weeks shorter.

Somehow I always seem to want to throw up while driving. One time I felt the bile rise up my throat at a traffic lights. Without any convenient stop, I had to swallow it back in. Yuck! After a while I got smart and carried extra vomit bags (little plastic bags) with me.

I could not keep any of my dinner down. Everything that I ate came right out again within an hour after the meal. Sometimes it was so bad, the projectile vomit shot right out of my nostrils. Once, I had some sprouts for dinner. You can imagine the time I spent picking out the sprouts from my nostrils afterwards. Urggh!

I felt like bionic woman with a bionic nose. Walking into a shopping mall was torturous as the smells of everything assailed me left, right and center. The smell of smoke, bakeries, restaurants, cooking, just about anything that had a smell would send me rushing straight to a restroom to puke.

Even at home, the smell of soap, perfume, haircream and even my husband's smell (which I love) turned me off.

I moaned and complained all day long. Even my husband who was sympathetic at first soon became immune. I felt awful, simply awful but it feels good to write this down and get it off my chest now. I still balk at the memory of it. Thankfully, however I didn't have to be hospitalized for it as some women may be when they have Hyperemesis Gravidarum, an extreme form of Morning Sickness. I cannot imagine how awful that must be. And all the while you will have well meaning people telling you to "Cheer up. You should be happy, you're expecting." I don't think that helped the nauseous feeling to go away.

I read in a book on Morning Sickness by Nicky Wesson about how morning sickness affects those around you including your spouse. Quoting from the book:

"Although he may be sympathetic, it can be very difficult for people to really understand the impact that pregnancy sickness has on someone if they haven't had it themselves. It is very hard to imagine feeling that ill day after day and, moreover, sympathy does run out eventually. It can be compared with colic babies, which lasts on average for the same length of time. At first you feel desperately sorry for the baby, but as time wears on and nothing that you do appears to make any difference, you start to lose patience. The fact that your tiny baby is in evident pain no longer affects you in the same way and you may begin to feel resentful and in need of sympathy yourself. Of course in neither case can a baby or a woman be blamed for their symptoms, nor has anything improved, but the capacity for sympathy in others has diminished."

How very true. Hopefully this post helps other mums who have bad morning sickness just so you won't feel so alone when even your spouse no longer becomes very sympathetic.

I did say that Getting Pregnant is hard work. Well, Being Pregnant is even harder work and if anyone thinks that after the baby is born, the hard work is over then I'm sorry to tell you that its just the beginning..... its just the beginning of a lifetime journey of motherhood.

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