The first trimester is always the hardest for me. After 8 pregnancies, and now 9, I’m pretty familiar with how things go for me. I have tried so many things to ease morning sickness. You can read more about that here: Coping With Morning Sickness
As I mentioned in the above post, morning sickness, is actually all day sickness (for me anyway). Ive come to just accept it, knowing I’ll being feeling better in my second trimester. Even so, life must go on and it can be very difficult to work, care for kids, cook, clean, homeschool…whatever your unique situation is, pregnancy morning sickness sure can affect life.
This time around I discovered cold peppermint tea. This might sound like an obvious solution, but seeing as I didn’t try it before and am trying it now, I decided to share. Along with a little variation that I’m finding extremely helpful.
I find myself craving ice cold drinks and I always opt for healthy and natural. So I’ve started regularly making this strong sweet peppermint tea in bulk, keep it in my fridge and then I can pour it and dilute it when I’m in a rush, I’ll take this with me pretty much everywhere I go right now.
Ive also found that adding electrolytes calms my nausea. This is the first time I’ve discovered this and the addition is night and day.
So let me share my Super Iced Cold Sweet Peppermint Tea With Electrolytes. ha ha.
I start by using a half gallon glass jar. Pour in half a cup of organic sugar. Not bleached white sugar, but rather orhanic cream colored sugar with all the minerals still in it. Then I use two tea bags of organic peppermint tea (since we are in winter I don’t have access to my fresh peppermint, after making this so much I plan to dry a bunch of peppermint this summer). By the way, I know this is a lot of sugar, but we are making a concentrated tea that we will dilute.
Pour boiling water to the top and allow it to sit, cool and dissolve all the sugar.
Once it’s cooled, I put a lid on it and store it in the fridge. When I’m ready to use it, I take a quart glass jar, fill half way with ice, then fill halfway with tea and the rest of the way with copper water.
We call water that’s been sitting in this large copper pot all night, “copper water”. Copper is important for thyroid function along with a whole host of other benefits. I was told to eat pine nuts to increase my copper but found out I was allergic to them. The next best thing, besides supplementation, is to literally drink out of copper. We fill this copper pot each night and drink the water the next day.
I also add a sprinkle of electrolytes and I use a recipe from a company called LMNT. You can buy their premade electrolyte packets but as a family of 10, it’s far more cost effective for me to buy their premade electrolyte ingredients in bulk and make it myself.
Here’s the recipe:
75 Grams of Sodium Chloride
11.5 Grams of Potassium Chloride
11.5 Grams of Magnesium Malate (this is very important as it’s not the kind of magnesium for relaxation but rather for energy and it makes all the difference!)
Weigh the above ingredients and shake together in a jar. You can easily double, quadrupole and more with this recipe.
To use, I just take a quart jar and fill it half way with ice, then sprinkle a little of this mixture on to the ice then fill with water, stir and sip slowly. Or in the case of the tea, I add this to the ice before adding my tea concentrate and water.
The exact serving size of this recipe is 3.3 grams but thats too salty for me in one sitting so I just eyeball a sprinkle and if I remember I try to do it twice a day. It helps immediately. For me anyway.
I have found all of these ingredients on Amazon in bulk.
Besides doing my best to support my body nutritionally and try things to curb the nausea, I just daily remind myself that, “this too shall pass!” I’ll get through these challenging days of nausea and soon have a fresh new squishy baby to hold.
Warmest Blessings,
Ashley
