Morning Sickness
6 Tips For Reducing Morning Sickness
Here are some home remedies you can try to help alleviate nausea during pregnancy.
1. More Snacks!
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, our satiety and hunger cues can change a lot during early pregnancy. Our overall eating patterns can change so that we’re “hangry” 24/7 but somehow can’t stand the sight of food at the same time.
Eating really large meals can make this feeling even worse. Try snacking throughout the whole day rather than eating three large meals. Keeping your stomach full can keep your blood sugars stable and ward off those nauseous feelings.
2. Try a nanti-nausea sea-band
Try wearing an acupuncture bracelet to put pressure on the P6/Nei-Kuan pressure point. Pressing on this pressure point can relieve both nausea and vomiting.
Find the P6 pressure point between the two tendons in the center of your inner wrist about three finger lengths beneath your hand.
Tons of people use these bracelet or wristbands to relieve morning sickness so they’re super easy to find at most drug stores or online.
3. Stick with the snacks that work for you!
Find some snacks that help you relieve your nausea and stock up. Lots of mamas say that having ginger ale, saltine crackers, lemon candies, B-vitamin lollipops, and peppermint tea helps reduce their nausea. Some even say that just the smell of lemons can help.
These kinds of snacks are super easy to take on the go or keep next to your bed if nausea creeps up on you unexpectedly.
Before bed, try a snack with lots of protein so you can keep those blood sugars stable overnight.
4. Keep Busy
Although exercising through your pregnancy definitely has its benefits, we’re talking about keeping your mind busy.
Keep yourself occupied so you can’t even pay attention to those yucky feelings that keep popping up. Try drawing, doing Sudoku, calling a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, or taking a walk in the fresh air.
5. Take a look at your prenatal Vitamin
It’s possible that taking your vitamin supplements in the morning may be triggering your nausea, especially in early pregnancy and especially if they contain iron. It is important that you have sufficient iron, but changing your specific supplement may help.
Try taking your vitamins in the evening or with a meal. If this doesn’t work, you may want to speak with a doctor or dietitian to see if other changes can be made. You may even want to discuss switching to a prenatal without iron for the first trimester, and then adding it back in once you've hit your second trimester.
A typical multivitamin PLUS
Slo-fe (this is an iron supplement that releases more slowly, added bonus that it can be less constipating than typical iron supplements)
Vitron-c, (this is also an iron supplement but it can be better tolerated than ferrous sulfate or gluconate by itself and has extra Vitamin C!)
You might also want to add vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) to your supplement routine as a lot of women report that it helps with their nausea.
6. Stay away from strong flavors
We’ve all experienced the troubles of our once wonderful homemade food suddenly upsetting our stomachs. It’s okay if you need to rely more on take-out and peanut butter sandwiches.
If you still want to cook at home but the strong smells are bothersome, try making meals that don’t need to be cooked.
You may also want to ask your significant other to help out and do the meal prep.
If These Remedies Don’t Work
Please speak with someone from your healthcare team if you experience extreme morning sickness and these tips don’t help you. They may have ideas for other approaches. They may also be able to prescribe medications that are super effective at getting rid of nausea.
Not every mama is the same and your experience may differ greatly from other women.
Pregnancy isn’t easy but we really hope you have more good days free of morning sickness!