My friend has terrible morning sickness

[Mrswhiskerson]

My best friend is two month pregnant and suffering from very bad morning sickness , she has lost a lot of weight in a very short space of time and feels miserable .

Does anyone know of anything she could do/eat /take to make her feel better?

I would love to cheer her up a bit .

Iv ondansetron is the only thing that worked for me.

The positive thing is that her hormones have kicked in. My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and I hadn't felt sick at all with that. Might not make her feel better physically, but mentally might help.

I really feel for your poor friend :( I am 38+4 with my first pregnancy and have suffered from hyperemesis all the way through :( I tried many of the solutions already suggested on here but the main thing that helped me was medication from my doctor so I would definitely advise your friend to visit her GP. For me taking the medication kept me out of hospital as without it I couldn't keep down water :(

Eating small amounts of very bland food also helped, toast, rice cakes and jam, crumpets, potatoes, etc. Nothing spicy or highly flavoured (I love spicy food) and drinking lots of milk helped with heartburn (which made me sick whenever I got it).

I'm a stone lighter now than before I was pregnant and still being sick (although thankfully not as often) but I don't have long to go now :) just have to make sure I don't get too hungry as that kicks off the sickness and heartburn and makes it worse.

I really hope your friend gets some help from her GP. I have heard that some GPs are not terribly sympathetic and won't do anything as it is "just part of being pregnant". Excessive sickness is NOT something we should have to put up with and if left untreated can be very damaging to the health of mum and baby so needs to be treated as early as possible, not when the mum is so dehydrated that she is on a drip in hospital!

"I have heard that some GPs are not terribly sympathetic and won't do anything as it is "just part of being pregnant"

Please, please, please - don't believe a doctor who says that. I didn't have sickness or even nausea in either of my pregnancies, or in the pregnancy I miscarried, so while it may be common it is absolutely not inevitable (I was just punished for my good luck by having a first birth from hell )

Seriously, encourage your friend to get help early, rather than later. Not all GPs are so thoughtless.

I ended up on a drip as well with ds1; luckily I managed to find a med that worked for me and there ARE plenty worth trying so I only ahd to get really ill with 1/4 of my pregnancies: when I strted getting bad with the others I got a prescription.

There are plenty of meds and well worth trying a few if you can persuade a GP to gie you any- meds aren't tested on pregnant women for obvious ethics reasons so some GPs will refuse: if your friend's does suggest she gets a referral to a decent Obstetrician who will have come across HG before.

Also the name of the game seems to be keep hydrated- YY to the lollies suggestion, and some women seem to keep hot down better than cold (can work either way) so suggest she plays around to find out; some easy to eat foods such as lettuce and melon have high water content as well and are worth a shot. I found preggie pops lollies helped as they kept my blood sugar stable and when that fluctuates you feel even worse so worth a go.

But if she gets really bad she must INSIST on help; GP told Dh it was normal for pregnancy and by the time GP saw me again I was slipping in and out of a coma. Not worth it.

I was quite sick with dd1 and dd2 - able to control it, with dd3 it was dreadful. Anything with dairy - cheese, chocolate, milk etc made me extra ill, so did anything with fruit - jam, actual fruit etc. The only thing seriously that I didn't throw up was Chinese food, not sure why. I was also able to eat nuts, peanut butter etc but not the bread with it

I saw a doctor about something else towards the end of the pregnancy and they recommended using Gaviscon preventatively, take a swig regularly before you eat. Also going against all that I had thought later in the evening was also when I could keep food down. Between 2pm and 7pm was a particularly sick time for me, also tiredness makes it worse.

Only thing that works for me is marmite on toast. Fresh salad as suggested by others - lettuce, cucumber etc makes feel I'll just thinking of it. I guess this goes to show what the whole thread shows: it's so personal.

I think you're a great friend for starting this thread. Good luck!

Rice pudding is a good one for me. When I can't force anything else down, this seems to work.

Not wanting to hijack the thread, but how do you manage the silent vomiting thing? I'm not too bad when I'm actually being sick, but most of the time I'm just wretching because my stomach is empty. For the life of me I cannot do it quietly. Please share the secret lol!

Some people find a slice of lemon helps the saliva production which can cause the silent retching, some don't of course but worth a shot?

Something else: been many eyars since I read up on this but there was research then that showed a link between tiredness and vomiting; worth bearing in mind

LouisaJF I used to drink lots of water just before I threw up or if I needed to throw up to try and eat something. That made it a lot easier to get it up.