The following is a general guide to how to improve morning sickness based on my own experience of having morning sickness right through 5 pregnancies! It is however important that you seek individual advice as the following may not be appropriate for your specific medical requirements and also you MUST ensure that you check for interactions with any supplements or medications you are currently taking. Please also seek the advice of an Integrative doctor for testing over and above the usual NZ pregnancy blood tests. Best wishes for your pregnancy.
- Eat as soon as you get out of bed and as soon as you wake as low blood sugars exacerbate morning sickness. This will mean keeping some food (ideally a gluten free ginger ‘something’ e.g. a ginger lozenge or biscuit or cracker).
- Eat little and often to stabilise your blood sugars.
- Do as many stress reduction techniques as possible-stress definitely worsens morning sickness! Check out this blog for my stress reduction tips (note some are not suitable for pregnant women so please get individual advice here). Along with this forgive your imperfections-you are human and what’s more you are growing a human and that really is a full-time job!
- Closely linked with stress reduction, aim for half an hour of you time a day. If you have other children try and find cover for them for this time so it is genuinely you time!
- Take naps if possible (for either less than 30 mins or around 90 mins) as again tiredness definitely makes morning sickness worse.
- Along with naps of course getting enough sleep is also crucial and you need to build up reserves for the early days of waking to your baby. Aim to be in bed by 9 or 10pm at the latest and sleep for at least 7.5 hours a night. Check out this blog for my sleep tips (note some are not suitable for pregnant women so please get individual advice here).
- Try morning sickness herbal teas.
- Try morning sickness remedies either homeopathic, herbal or supplement blends (under guidance of a trained professional).
- Get fresh air through gentle nature walks/cycling.
- Reduce chemical exposure, e.g. Cleaning products so unfortunately (lol) that may mean you can’t do as much cleaning. Don’t sweat the small stuff, i.e. a messy house, think of it as training for having children as your standards for a clean and tidy house will definitely go down once those wee darlings arrive! In any case a less than perfectly clean house has been shown in very good research to be good for the development of the wee ones’ immune system.
- Reduce exposure to foods/smells that make you nauseous. For example, I normally love fresh basil but when pregnant the smell would make me very nauseous.
- Try not to resort to eating weird things, e.g. charcoal! Yes, some mums get some weird cravings!