A few questions

[Meringue33]

1. What is the evolutionary purpose of morning sickness?
2. What is the evolutionary purpose of having to wee all the time?
3. How do women in less fortunate times/places cope with the first trimester, without being able to just lie down really often????!

Unforunately not all things we are faced with as human beings are made from evolution. We need those hormones, which are important, and when we have an increase in them, we have symptoms. Our bodies take time to adjust to the increase in hormones, which is why we do eventually cope with them. Just be thankful our bodies can eventually cope with the increase.

I believe women just dealt with it because they had to. I think about this often, wondering how they use to be able to deal with all the horrible things I feel like I can't deal with. I guess they were just tougher .

My midwife told me morning sickness was to prevent you ingesting anything risky to the baby and the general feeling of wanting to curl up and sleep forever was in the days before pregnancy tests to prevent you doing anything risky to yourself and baby when you didn't know you were pregnant.

I guess it can be interpreted as the urge to find a good non-drafty cave to go curl up in. So that you and bump are safe from roaming sabre-tooths. :)

If you can't lie down very often you just get on with things feeling like shit.

I would say I am in a fortunate time & place but that didn't help when I had to excuse myself from class to throw up, then hope I had got the sick off my shoes / out of my hair as I carried on teaching 3 minutes later.

A consultant friend of mine said morning sickness is an ailment of the western world. In some of the developing world it is rarely reported as pregnancy symptom. Think this depends in the diet they eat though. He always implied it was psychological which always wound me up This article is really interesting

m.discovermagazine.com/2000/sep/featbiology/

I very much hold with the theory that it stops you having things that may harm the baby. I normally love booze but go off it before I've even had a BFP.

Lol, makes sense I suppose but isn't there a risk of not eating enough to feed the baby?? I've gone off healthy things like fruit too yet fancy things like crisps.

By the way does anyone have any tips for trying to wee less? Ten times during the night last night and feeling exhausted. :( I'm ten weeks

I don't think you can do anything about the weeing. It's a matter of physics - your growing uterus takes up more space, so there is a bit less for the bladder, it holds less and is under a little more pressure, so you have to empty it more often.

There's a theory that you go off things that are more likely to be slightly off - so fruit, meat, cheese etc, all good for you, but more likely to be contaminated or slightly off than dry salty things like crisps. I suppose the theory is that your body is especially cautious in the first trimester when the developing baby is very vulnerable.

midget your consultant was talking rubbish because hyperemesis is most common in the Asian subcontinent (much more than here).

I was so ill with hyperemesis (multiple hospitalisations, loads of drips etc) that a hundred years ago or in a less developed country I would probably not have survived. But a few studies have suggested that even hyperemesis correlates with some advantages (assuming you survive!) - for instance a better quality of placenta. It must be good for something!

There was also a study published a few years ago that linked a correlation of the morning sickness of the mother to a higher IQ of the child.

Always wondered what that says about my ds (and this soon to be dd) as I've never suffered one bit of morning sickness??

As far as the weeing, in the beginning of pregnancy it may help if you lay off drinking anything a few hours before you go to sleep, but drink normally during the rest of the day. You shouldn't drink less and become dehydrated, just alter the time you drink.

So is the morning sickness a reaction to the presence of hcg or to its increasing?

abcde there is no agreed explanation for morning sickness, and how/whether it is related to hcg. It is known that hyperemesis (extreme, dangerous morning sickness) is more likely in certain types of pregnancies (e.g. twins) where we also know that levels of hcg are higher, but that might be coincidence. I have severe hyperemesis with a singleton pregnancy but I know that my hcg levels were high. It's also possible that the sickness is a sort of 'over sensitivity' to hcg, rather than a reaction to high levels (or of course both could be a factor). It's also true that for most women sickness is at its worst in the same period (around weeks 8-12) where hcg levels are highest. I have a bad case and started feeling sick immediately, as soon as I was pregnant (when hcg levels should be very low) and I am still throwing up every single day at 18 weeks (when hcg levels should have decreased again). So possibly I am very sensitive to it, or possibly my levels have been high for my stage all the way through, or both. Or of course both high hcg and sickness may be caused by something that stands behind them both.

Short answer: no-one knows, but most women feel sickest when hcg is highest.

I don't know what causes it, but I know that mine is starting!! Am 6+4 and really feeling nauseous this weekend. My mum and both my sisters had hyperemesis with all of their pregnancies, all of them were hospitalised for parts of each pregnancy because of it and am dreading it. Have been busy talking myself round to being the one woman of our family to not get it, but struggling for the first time today. Am just dreading trying to balance work and life with bad sickness. I also care for my husband a bit who is tetraplegic. 9 months is such a long time!!!! :-(

I have my own theory about MS. That it's somehow biologically testing whether the woman is well nourished enough to handle looking after a baby & sporadic foraging, & whether she's in a community that will look after her, too. Because human infants are so needy.

adventureswithvoles I reckon you are onto something. My DP thinks that there is a higher incidence of hyperemesis in South Asian communities because the extended family offers the sort of support which allows women to survive it. Having been so ill myself I can really see that family support would make the difference between survival and not.

If I can face getting pregnant again I am going to make a conscious effort to put on weight first because I am not very heavy and I lost a whole stone in a fortnight in weeks 6-8. Was so ghastly and am still lighter now at 18 weeks than I was when I got pregnant.

So much to think about! Thanks for the water tip SamraLee. Tried that last night and think it worked. In other news, Jacobs Crackers seeming like a winner food wise...