How do I eat when nausea strikes?

[ForeverHopeful21]

I'm 6 weeks and the nausea has started to hit. I'm really struggling to eat anything with nutritional value. All I want is crackers and crisps.

I'm able to force myself to have a decent breakfast but come 10am it all goes down hill. I keep reading how important a healthy diet is, but the thought of most food makes me feel green.
Last night I actually fancied pizza (not great I know, but at least it was something different) but then once I took one bite, I thought I was going to throw up and couldn't eat it.

My BMI on on the low side so part of me thinks that any food is better than no food. But then again, a day of beige food can't be great.
Anyone else in a similar position or have any advice?

Eat crunchy food-very distracting

I had extreme nausea and sickness for the entire term of my first pregnancy and basically lived on jacket potatoes with butter and packs of cheesy wotsits. I was also very slim at that point and baby was 10lb4oz . Hope you feel better soon .

The first trimester is hard! Don't worry about trying to be healthy just eat what you can and try to keep hydrated. Other than fruit and crackers I couldn't eat much. The baby will get everything it needs tho, and if anything you'll just feel a bit run down as baby gets first dibs on any nutrition. Just get through these tough first few weeks xx

Eat whatever you fancy and can keep down; I had all day all pregnancy 'morning 'sickness twice. I lost weight with the first one and with the second just ate whatever I fancied. Both babies were good weights and fine; I was just glad to stop being sick! You will be ok!

I had severe HG and was hospitalised twice for fluids. It is really horrible and I really sympathise. I lived off cereal bars and I had a special diet where I had to try have a larger breakfast, smaller lunch and very small dinner. Sometimes the bucket saw more than my belly but it eventually clicked. Also it was a white diet. Potato, rice, chicken, white fish, cauliflower. I was pretty much bed ridden for the first 4/5 months and never made a meal. Luckily my husband likes cooking. Good luck and hope it passes soon

Ice lollies are your friend. I cried and cried because I wasn't eating the right things because everything made me sick for 30 weeks but my midwife said as long as you take your vitamins and get enough fluids in, baby will get what it needs. Often I couldn't even drink so I had ice lollies which kept my hydrated and often are quite sugary so keep your energy levels up.
In terms of food, anything you can manage is a bonus, just keep trying all sorts, my theory was if I'm going to be sick anyway I may as well have tried something good!
Good luck and hope you're better soon

I think that nothing beats plain toast when you're feeling nauseous. In fact, I'm having some now (not pregnant, just took dds out for the day and stupidly ate too much sugary crap) and feeling better already.

Echo everyone else - just eat what you can! Baby will be fine. With my first I was obsessed with those Heinz tins of macaroni cheese - absolutely vile and zero nutritional value but I practically lived on them! She's fine. My second i had terrible afternoon-evening nausea and didn't eat dinner (or any fruit or veg to speak of) for about 4 months. Also fine. You say you're ok with breakfast, so maybe aim for a bit of fruit or something there, and then don't worry about it. Just take your folic acid (and even that is only really important for the first few weeks tbh) and then look after you

I survived almost entirely on salt and vinegar crisps, and chips drowned in vinegar at the start of this pregnancy as they were the only things that didn't make me sick.

I soon worked out that taking my vitamins in the morning made me sick, and I was struggling with taking tablets as they were making me gag. Pregnacare does a liquid version of their vitamins which I still swear by, I take it at night right before I go to bed and it helps with the nausea it was causing.

i had HG from conception to delivery ....and lived on cans of cola ( full sugar) and king size twiz bars , ( only king size stayed down , oddly normal ones came back up)...my obstetric consultant suggested i added in tea with as many sugars as i could dissolve in it...and laughed out loud at the midwife who huffily said ' well she wont be wanting all those calories'....his opinion was high sugar foods, little and often and rest was the only way to get through it....i feebly asked about vitamins etc and he said take a supplement ( which i did and threw up again every day) bit frankly our bodies will give the growing foetus all it needs at our expense, so if you are generally healthy to start with and have had a good varied diet up to point of conception then the foetus , which is an effective parasite will 'soak' up all it needs.

i was so sick i felt at times suicidal, honestly even considered a top of this much wanted baby, but once i just let myself have sips of sugary drinks all day i felt like i could cope and even at times post a twix for about half an hr felt normal.

honestly OP..try not to worry...

i know it is trite and possibly even patronising but think of women in countries undergoing famine, war, the pregnant refugees, all of whom are unlikely to be getting adequate nutrition and vitamins etc, well they do still produce babies..maybe smaller babies but still healthy babies are being born after the most terrible antenatal periods.

i would also add that my second DD ( her of the cola and king twix pregnancy ) was a hefty healthy 9lb err

My advice is as per everyone else, eat what you can, don't beat yourself up about nutrition, just eat what makes you feel better at that point (the very same thing would usually then tend to make me feel 100x worse within days, my saviour quickly became my enemy!)
Also, when you start feeling better (for me it was probably week 13 ish, then push yourself to eat better, because when the 3rd trimester sh t hits the fan you may find yourself eating rubbish again, and this eases the conscience if nothing else. Me: my back hurts so much so I'll eat lots of chocolate instead of fruit. But i ate really well in the 2nd trimester so that's ok*

What I did recently, was stand in the fruit section of Aldi and just see if i fancied anything

Mango pieces caught my eye and I've been eating them since, I think because they are cool and soothing

I'm about 7 weeks OP and I'm starting to struggle too, especially today. I'm just trying to eat little and often. One thing I'm finding easy to have is smoothies or pressed apple juice, and it's making me feel a bit better knowing baby is getting some goodness. Also I'm taking pregnancy vits which must help. Good luck! x

Plain white rice, buckwheat pasta, oat cakes, some vegetables like peas, haricot verts.

Peppermint tea, pure jasmine tea (ie just jasmine flowers with no tea), melissa tea.

I would personally steer well clear of coke and rubbish chocolate.

Water biscuits helped and making sure you don't have an empty stomach

Ridingwindhorses... Why?

Ridingwindhorses.. Why?

a) they're bad for you, high sugar, no nutrition, empty calories and b) they'd make me vomit when nauseous.

Before I was pregnant I was full of 'I'm going to eat a super healthy diet and only good things to give my baby the best goodness' but when it came to it the nausea was so intense and awful I had to eat what I could manage at the time and there wasn't much choice in healthy foods. For several weeks I think I survived on multiple packs of salt and vinegar crisps!

Things that worked ish for me at different times were cheese scones, crackers, ginger biscuits, pasta and very plain sauce, toast, bagels, crisps. I think that's pretty much what I lived on when pg along with sniffing lemons and lying in bed a lot whist the world swayed around me in a constant nausea state.

The thing that helped was to eat frequently even if I didn't feel hungry and not get too tired, which made it worse. But it is dire, I really suffered and sympathise. I had mine throughout and was on tablets at 4 weeks!

aww try not to worry.that in itself causes more axiety then more nausea. I no its not that easy and you have every right to feel that with your previous experiences especially
can you do toast.some wheatbran toast even.or rye bread.and try adding a bit of jame or spread.
if your starving yourself(I no your not) but you will then feel sick for empty tummy.so if you aren't eating enough this could also add to it.so keep trying little and often.
nothing to warm or cold.
I don't no why but golden grahams were really good for me or conflakes.
also those little bags of seeds and nuts.just trying to keep munching little and often.
tins of rice pudding.
rich tea biscuits.
cheese on toast.these are all quite colourless but I could manage.
anything tomato made me worse I was told because of the acidity.so if trying something try a white based sauce.
do you like white fish.i managed some fish fingers.or a fillet of white fish just with some light butter sauce and sage.and sometimes crumbled some bread or crisps on top of that.i thin we had this as a kid which is why it was so comforting.
is there anything you can think of when you were little you had?
also try not to have food with drinking lots.it wont help.
water was hard for me but warming it up a little was better.seemed to shock the tummy less.

I never understood the whole morning sickness thing until I fell pregnant with my son.

What really helped me was switching to oat milk, rather than regular milk, i found my stomach was less unsettled to start the day and I could actually face (slowly) eating a belvita breakfast bar (probably because they're so dry they absorb anything that's actually in you)

Best of luck x

I second what MTBMummy said about swapping away from dairy for a little while. I forgot how awfully sick anything with the smallest amount of dairy in made me for the first 4 months. I swapped over to almond milk and that helped massively with the dairy related sickness.

I'm able to tolerate milk again now, and I'm drinking it like it's going out of fashion (especially when mixed with liberal amounts of strawberry milkshake powder...)

I lived pretty much entirely off salted pretzels, rice with soy sauce and fizzy cola bottles for the first 5 months. DS oddly enough can't get enough of sushi and is a totally normal 12 year old. He was also 9lb5 when born so clearly was getting plenty of nutrition from me .

Like others said whatever gets you through the day is the best option, I believe you are also allowed to smack anyone who suggest ginger or that they know how you feel, they had horrendous MS and once they were actually sick.

If it's really bad get thee to the docs, I didn't and really regret suffering as much as I did. When I started being sick again in the final month I let them pump me full of cyclizine and it was amazing - the same when I went into labour.