Pregnancy – Vomiting and Nausea Associated With Morning Sickness
Morning sickness is a condition that typically takes place during the first trimester of a woman’s pregnancy. Vomiting and nausea are the symptoms experienced by 88 percent of pregnant women. The other 12 percent – lucky!
If you are one of the unlucky 88 percent who experiences morning sickness, you may be lucky enough to only experience it in the morning. For many women, the vomiting continues on well past noon. That’s probably because a lot of the sickness is triggered by external stimuli, like smells and tastes.
How long do the morning sickness suffers have to endure this condition? The nausea and vomiting persists through their first trimester, with 50 percent completely symptom-free by 14 weeks. The other 50 percent – not so lucky!
There are some pregnant women who have it even worse because the vomiting is so bad, and lasts so long, that they lose a lot of weight (more than 5% of their body weight) and become dehydrated. These women have hyperemesis gravidarum, which is just a fancy medical term for extreme morning sickness.
The women who have this condition during their pregnancy have to seek medical advice, and sometimes need to be hospitalized because they can’t keep any food or liquids down. Unfortunately, as with mild to moderate morning sickness, hyperemesis gravidarum can continue up until the baby is born. This condition should be taken seriously, and should not be treated by the woman herself.
There are plenty of theories of what causes morning sickness, but no hard evidence of its true cause. To date, a cure has not been found, but there are plenty of ways to treat the symptoms.
The first way to stop the vomiting is to avoid scents and eating foods that cause it. Simple, right? You’d think so, but a woman never knows what’s going to trigger the response, so it’s hard for her to avoid what she doesn’t know. As she works through her first trimester, taking note of the triggers will help.
Another difficult thing about avoiding the triggers is being able to avoid them 24/7. If the affected pregnant woman has no plans to leave the house at all during her pregnancy… she’s golden. But, if like most women, she has to get out and take care of things in her life… it’s not so easy.
A pregnant woman has a better chance of controlling the vomiting and nausea of pregnancy by treating her symptoms, not avoiding them. Most treatments can seem a little unconventional to most women. This is only because they haven’t had to use them before.
A treatment that seems the most bizarre to women is acupuncture. It’s basically treating morning sickness with needles. These aren’t needles like a doctor uses to give you shots. These needles are like long flexible pins that are inserted into the skin.
It also doesn’t hurt like most people think. The pain is different for everyone, but it’s like a deep pressure at the point of insertion. For other treatments, see this article I wrote on morning sickness relief (link to other article).
If you haven’t experienced morning sickness yet, and you’re in your first trimester, chances are, you will (statistically speaking.) Try to avoid the triggers and explore your options as far as treatment goes. You’ll have a much happier pregnancy if you do.
