As a mother of 8 and now pregnant with my 9th, I’ve had my fair share of morning sickness. Although, I don’t know why it’s called “morning sickness”, because I find it sticks around morning, noon and night and all the moments in between ha ha.
After various degrees of it, this time round I’m finding some new and old ways to help me cope and I wanted to share them with you.
Sometimes, I admit, not much helps. I find the first semester of pregnancy to be one of the most challenging. It’s really not until around the third trimester I begin to feel more like myself, despite a ballooning belly, achy back and slightly swelling sore legs (btw compression socks are a lifesaver all throughout pregnancy and post pregnancy; for sore legs, blood clots and even overall energy!
So here’s a bit of my experience along with the things I’ve tried over the past 18 years of pregnancies.
Cravings: Just give in. Years ago I would have fought this as I have always been extremely health conscious but after this many babies, I have learned that cravings help the nausea and they don’t last forever. For me anyway. Now, I admit I don’t go too far with them. Some ingredients and foods I just cannot tolerate such as sodas/cokes and food coloring. These things give me migraines. Typically I can’t tolerate gluten very well, but I’m going to admit that a huge craving I get is Costco pizza. I won’t touch Costco pizza any other time than when I’m in early pregnancy, I’m sick as a dog and the ONLY thing that sounds good is a big cheesy slice of Costco pizza ha ha. So. Give in, within reason. Allow yourself a small season to eat what you’re craving and see if it helps with the nausea. Try to find the “whole food” version of your craving. For example if it’s chocolate chip cookie, see if you can find a small simple bakery, or ask a friend or family member to make you some if you can’t. If it’s pizza, like mine, I try to find frozen pizza with simple ingredients, or make my own if I can be on my feet long enough. Smoothies help too because they coat the stomach. I find cold things feel best on a nauseas stomach too. Something slightly sweet can also calm morning sickness, so a strawberry milkshake with ice, whole milk, cream, strawberries and some honey (I personally) find to be very soothing on an early pregnancy tummy.
Odors and fragrances: this is a huge one for me. Especially synthetic fragrances, which aren’t good for the human body anyway. When I worked at markets, all the scented candles and soaps made me so ill. I could hardly manage the welling up intense nausea they caused. Odors too turn my stomach in these early pregnancy months and with a small farm, an indoor dog and 8 kids who enjoy having rowdy friends over, you can imagine it gets stinky.
So what to do? Well, for us, our house is always fragrance free as fragrances are linked to all sorts of health issues. I found out years ago we couldn’t tolerate them. We do not have scented candles, perfumes or even products with a slight smell. I make everything we use and when it comes to cleaning, there’s a lot you can do with a humble bar of degreasing soap. I also buy a probiotic cleaner for our weekly clean house day. We use this cleaner to wipe down toilets, counters, and floors. It’s works beautifully on wood floors and tiles too. I also spray it on my sofas, mattresses and door mats. The probiotics help to keep odors at bay. Beeswax candles. Real, pure, beautiful beeswax candles help clear the air and offer a welcoming warm honey like scent. They are a great investment to an odor free home.
Years ago I struggled to keep my home clean and homeschool. It seemed impossible to keep the house in somewhat order with us trying to finish school and spending so much time in our house. I remembered back in “real” school noticing janitors sweeping halls and taking out the trash at days end and it dawned on me that I should treat our busy little house school like that too. Now with so many kids in varying ages it’s really easy to divide my home into stations. After school each kid picks up and vacuums their station, my older son takes out the compost and we don’t generate much trash because we cook from bulk and scratch we have less packaging coming in and we compost. But those two things can contribute a lot of odor. So I sprinkle baking soda in the diaper pale or trash and we take it out regularly along with composting our food scraps. Removing these orders in this way helps so much with morning sickness. Vacuuming floors and rugs and even the tops of the sofa cushions helps so much with the smells. Vacuuming is something little kids can help with too depending on what kind of vacuum you have. My toddlers view our vacuum as a toy and will just run the vacuum for fun sometimes.
Opening windows! Daily I open our windows, even in winter (so long as they’re not frozen shut) and I find this lovely chore to be really enjoyable in refreshing my home and moving the stagnant air out. In summer our windows are open 24/7. Yay for coutry homestead life.
Peppermint Tea: This pregnancy I have discovered that a quart jar of iced cold sweet peppermint tea hits the spot amd soothes my nausea.
I just use two Organic peppermint tea bags, place them in a half gallon jar with half a cup of organic sugar.
Pour boiling water over the sugar amd tea bags to the top. I let this sit out until it’s cool and the sugar has dissolved. Once it’s cool I cap it and place it in my fridge for a few days of cold sweet tea.
Here’s how I drink it.
Fill a quart jar half way with ice, fill about half the jar with the strong sweet tea.
Fill the rest of the way with water. I use water from my copper pot to attempt to increase my dietary copper. Then I just slowly sip it while I’m reading or preparing a post or teaching. This has helped so much to soothe my nausea and get my fluids up as I struggle to keep plain water down.
Electrolytes:
This is the first pregnancy where I’ve used electrolytes. I have noticed that salty food appeases nausea so it had me wondering if I’ve been low on trace minerals. I use Redmond Salt, Pink Hymilayan Salt amd sometimes pure Sea Salt.
I use a recipe from a company called LMNT and I’ll share that here.
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.
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. The exact serving size of this recipe is 3.3 grams but thats too salt 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.
A good pregnancy multi and B6:
It can be difficult to get vitamins down in the early part of pregnancy. I find taking them at night works best on my stomach. I use Everydea vitamins amd they have given me a coupon code for my readers. They also have a nursing multivitamin along with a stress and mood support vitamin. This helped me immensely with my last pregnancy as I suffer terribly from post partum depression.
They are located in the US and Canada and they are a wonderful small family owned business.
You can find them here:
Use my code: WILDWOODSANDHOMESTEAD for 15% off.
B6:
I have recently started taking B6 at the direction of my midwife and I do think it’s helping. I plan to continue taking it to see if it helps. I take the NOW brand as it’s very economical with the best ingredients but you can find whichever brand you prefer. B12 is also supposed to help, this vitamin is found in egg yolks and I don’t know about you, but eggs are simply intolerable for me the first few months of pregnancy ha ha! So I plan to try a B 12 supplement soon until I can get back to my daily fried eggs in butter and tallow.
Taking a nap:
I know this is a hard one and it sounds so simple and obvious but exhaustion does seem to exacerbate nausea. Especially if you’re in the early years of motherhood. Nap times are for laundry, dishes and supper prep time. But when I look back I realize how much I could have let a lot go when we were a small family of four. Naps really do help with nausea. 18 years of motherhood and I can say hands down that 20 minutes of deep uninterrupted rest is the most restorative thing for our bodies and minds.
Just twenty minutes. No phone. No tv. No music. No podcast. Just get your kids settled and into a routine where they know mom is going to lie down. Relax like jelly, close your eyes, forget about everything (this is literally a tactic taught in the military to help soldiers rest between battle). When you get up you’ll notice an ease up of nausea so you can get back to your day.
Iron:
I suspect low iron contributes to my “morning” sickness but it wasn’t until I spoke with my midwife that she mentioned this and it clicked. It’s always a good idea to get blood work for ferritin levels and of course to consume bioavailable forms of iron.
I have found beef and beef liver to make the most noticeable difference for me personally. Most iron supplements can cause stomach cramps and constipation. I find eating liver is the fastest way to feel that surge of energy; all those b vitamins and that high iron content, liver is truly a super food!
I’m not up to cooking liver in my first trimester though, so a good alternative is desiccated grass-fed beef liver pills. Taking a bioavalable food form iron also makes something like vitamin A toxicity pretty much irrelevant. I honestly don’t think a body could eat too much nutrient dense clean liver.
Magnesium and Probiotics:
Constipation can worsen nausea in pregnancy and there are some natural easy ways to deal with this. One being magnesium. I use a topical spray magnesium because I find magnesium citrate and other versions create the opposite effect with stomach cramps and diarrhea.
Not all topical magnesium is the same! Most brands I’ve tried sting pretty badly. A few years ago my mother in law, (who has incredibly sensative skin due to severe autoimmune disease) shared Activatation Products Magnesium with me. I’m not affiliated with this brand, I just love them and their product is gentle enough even for my babies! It works too. I relax and ease into sleep much easier the nights I remember to use this. I spray it on my tummy and it helps with constipation in pregnancy.
We buy their magnesium in bulk and they have Black Friday sales and other sales through out each year. Sign up for their emails and you’ll get notices for their yearly deals!
Probiotics in general during pregnancy are very helpful. Finding one that contains L. Rhuteri bacteria is very important as this bacteria contribute to “happy” moods and is a strain of bacteria that is easily wiped out in the human gut with medications and antibiotics, meaning we most likely need to replenish it. Often a heavy dose of a good probiotic is enough to clear constipation. This helps a lot with morning sickness and keeping food down!
I didn’t even highlight this next one because it’s most likely going to sound crazy. Coffee enemas. Yes.
I’m not a doctor. I’m not a nurse. I’m not a medical professional. I’m just a mom who’s been pregnant and breastfeeding off and on for over 18 years and these are things I’ve learned to use to cope through these difficult seasons. Proceed with caution and do your own research. It’s your precious body and your precious baby.
Coffee enemas produce bile and help to clean out the colon and liver. I used them in my cancer routine when I was diagnosed with cancer 12 years ago. I used them as a form of detoxing and healing my body. When I was pregnant with my fifth child I ran across a forum of moms using them to heal severe pregnancy nausea. So. I gave them a try for that pregnancy and in an afternoon I felt immediately better with loads of returned energy.
I think it’s interesting that coffee enemas were a standard routine in the medical Merck Manuel for post surgery pain and a plethora of other ailments. Coffee enemas were used in WW1 for pain when hospitals ran low on morphine. I’m not entirely sure what the connection is; but even in my own experience, I know I can handle discomfort and pain much easier after a coffee enema amd when I’m in general, not constipated. If memory serves, the implementation of coffee enemas for medical purposes was removed from the Merck Manuel so they could fit “new” information in. Nevertheless less there are a lot of antidotal stories and evidence out there to support their continued use when necessary.
From personal experience, they work but please research on your own and of course proceed with caution.
I hope a few of these ideas might help anyone in the throes of those challenging early pregnancy days. The nausea can make it nearly impossible to function sometimes, but take heart, this is a small tiny season for the life of a very special human inside you!
Warmest Blessings,
Ashley
