I failed to treat my morning sickness with my only pregnancy thus far, but from my experience it 100% can be related to keeping a full belly.
To further support eating, here is an excerpt from the
Dr Brewer's site:
The risk we undertake in ignoring a mother's morning sickness is that her inability to eat adequately will interfere with one of the primary needs of every pregnant body--increasing the blood volume by 60% (and more than that for a multiple pregnancy). This increase is needed because the maternal lake of blood behind the placenta needs to continue to grow as the placenta grows, and because the placenta itself needs a growing supply of blood as it grows. Without this increase in blood volume, the mother is at an increasing risk of shallow placental implantation, placental hypoxia, blood clots forming behind the placenta, rising BPs, pathological edema, pre-eclampsia, HELLP, IUGR, premature labor, and of having a baby with a low birth weight.
Unfortunately, due to my bad eating habits and morning sickness I fell under the category of 'inadequate increase in blood volume' and went into premature labor. Baby is fine and is turning 2 this month :)
Since that pregnancy I have now come to realize that most everyone probably needs to eat more regularly even when not pregnant. I found this to 100% be true for me in particular since this helped my cycles return to normal after an agonizing 10 months of them being way longer than they
should be. It literally was night and day when I changed my diet to be more frequent food and less preservatives/high fructose corn syrup (things I already limited).
(I also learned the science of balancing blood sugar with protein/carb proportions, I'm not diabetic but it's important for everyone anyway)
Currently I eat 3 meals and 3 snacks. Snacks being after breakfast, after lunch, right before bed. Your snacks can be something as simple as a glass of
milk, but you need to have something to help maintain your blood sugar. And mind you, I'm not even pregnant right now and I need this to function well during the day so anticipate needing to eat more often, bigger portions, or more substantial food while pregnant.
To curb the nausea so you don't fall into the vicious cycle of never wanting to eat and yet not eating makes it worse, eat or drink (juice or milk) something before you even get out of bed. The idea here is that you have gone many hours without food to help manage your blood sugar, so you're going to need to consume something to raise it a bit. A carb/sugary thing is best. This is just to buy you time to hop out of bed and get a real breakfast made, include a protein to help balance the carbs/sugar you just put in your body and any others you consume with breakfast. I make a point to eat two eggs for breakfast, as they are one of the best foods you can eat for both your and your baby's health.
Once you've managed to curb the 'morning' in 'morning sickness', it all comes down to eating frequently during the day to keep it from creeping up on you later in the day. 3 meals, 3 snacks. More if you feel sickness coming on.
If merely eating more often and nutritiously isn't
enough for you, because let's be honest it will help a lot but doesn't guarantee the feeling goes away, then here are
some recommendations from Dr Brewer's site.
He lists B vitamins, something a midwife friend of mine told me to do as well. It didn't help me at all, probably because I hadn't gotten down the eating frequently thing. If you try B vitamins, make sure it's a good one.. so no synthetic vitamins.
Standard Process has a great product for this made with highly nutritious animal organs and other whole foods. Unfortunately it has to be purchased through an affiliated health care practitioner. My
local natural medicine doctor/nurse has these for sale in their lobby- you don't even need to be a patient.
I have a friend who swears by homeopathy, but she still had morning sickness ;)
I liked using ginger at first, and eventually it just added to my nausea. Womp womp.
If nothing else, I think these guidelines can keep you from having
debilitating morning sickness if not preventing it all together. Looking back at my pregnancy, I had morning sickness into my third trimester and I think I could have made it just a first trimester ordeal if I managed my nutrition and eating habits better.
And, if what I had to say about managing blood sugar with balancing protein/carbs and eating more frequently is of interest to you, I
HIGHLY recommend this book:
How to Heal Your Metabolism. It is where I learned much of what I currently know and it has completely changed my life. As I said before, I was having issues with my womanly functions postpartum, doctor was ready to do something about it if "Nothing changes next month". But just a month of following the guidelines in this book saved me, phew! Now I'm trying to follow it as best as I can because I realize I was nutritionally deficient before my first pregnancy and I don't want to be in the same boat next time.
Disclaimer: I just wanted to add, I know I keep talking about eating all the time but I'm not obese or anything! lol... I did gain a few pounds after following that book, but that's because I was under 100lbs when I started. (I'm short so that's not that weird, but now I realize it wasn't really healthy either) Everyone needs to make sure they're filling their bodies with good and frequent nutrition, but child birthing women especially need to pay attention to this; when not pregnant and especially when pregnant.
I hope this all helps!
And don't be afraid of drinking some ginger beers/ales here and there :) Just make sure it's made with cane sugar and not high fructose corn syrup. I lived off that and potato soup in my first trimester.
You've got this!
(And congratulations, assuming you're asking for yourself)
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