What do you drink?

[Petris123]

I've run out of ideas 😶
17 weeks pregnant

• Plain water makes me feel sick
• decaf tea gives me palpitations (i assume decaf coffee does too)
• was drinking hibiscus tea - found out it's not recommended
• was drinking twinings lemon and ginger tea and found out that has fennel in it, also not recommended
• not a massive fan of squash
• I drink orange juice / cranberry juice but can't have that all day

What do you drink?? I'd like herbal teas with no "not recommended" ingredients, any ideas?

• also how paranoid are you about not recommended ingredients on prepackaged foods (like soup for example), things like nutmeg oil?

Thank you for any suggestions! 😊

I just stuck to the NHS guidelines when it came to avoiding certain foods. You would drive yourself mad otherwise and probably limit yourself to a lot of things.
You could maybe try some flavoured water? Supermarkets do some nice ones!

I'm on strawberry Volvic as can keep the bottles in the fridge so can have ice cold!

For a hot drink how about something like a hot vimto or similar?

Water with orange squash, fizzy orange juice or lemonade is all I can manage.

Hated them all before being pregnant!

I’ve been drinking lemon and ginger tea as I hadn’t heard anything about fennel not being recommended although I’ve just checked the NHS website and it says this:

‘Some of the herbs used in herbal tea can also be potentially dangerous if you have a lot of them during pregnancy; especially during weeks 1 to 12 (first trimester).
As a general rule, if you drink no more than 1 to 2 cups of herbal tea a day during your pregnancy, you should be fine.’

I drank it during my first pregnancy (no more than one cup a day) and that all turned out ok so I will continue to this pregnancy but again, max one cup a day.

Sparkling water might be an option if you can’t drink still?

I can’t seem to edit my post above, but I’ve just checked and the lemon and ginger tea bags I have are Aldi and they don’t contain fennel 😊

It’s weird but I’m living on plain hot water at the moment! It’s strangely quite nice once you get used to it! Have you tried boiled water? X

I could only handle decaf black tea, mango juice and caffeine free diet coke .

Orange fizzy lucozade following a day of sickness is my go to - obv have to limit due to sugar/caffeine. But it is glorious!

Tesco own brand flavoured still water is really good and cheap enough to stock up on.

Orange/apple/mango juice all fine although I wouldn’t usually have these not pregnant.

Ice cold water

Quite often fancy chocolate nesquick before bed.

I lived off sparkling water with loads of ice, sometimes with a splash of Vimto or fresh orange in there. I couldn’t tolerate the sparkling water when it started to go flat though- it had to be nice and fizzy or my nausea would come back.

Also, Aldi do a berry tea which was nice when I wanted a hot drink.

@SarahB88 fizzy orange juice as in you add fizzy water to it?

@OopsieeDaisy I've been having 3 or 4 cups a day as I read somewhere on the nhs that 4 cups was the limit, so not feeling great about that now. Do you have a link? 😐 good to know about the aldi one
@Eyemax I used to have fizzy mineral water but i found my dinner didn't go down for hours with it, although it helped with the sickness
@Igglepiggleandhisboat I tried plain hot watee before pregnancy and wasn't a massive fan, but I'll try again, you never know!
@Pastaf0rbreakfast nesquik does sound nice :)

@Petris123 No something like Fanta or any other brand does the job. Fresh orange with lemonade also seems to a winner.

Here’s the link, it’s just under ‘other foods and drinks’.
https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/keeping-well/foods-to-avoid/
I wouldn’t worry about it, perhaps cut down to just a couple of cups or switch to one with no fennel. I think a lot of the NHS guidelines are very precautionary though and if fennel was actually known to be bad during pregnancy, they would list it specifically. I always think of people that don’t find out they’re pregnant until much later on and carry on eating/drinking everything we’re advised to avoid with no issues!

@OopsieeDaisy thank you for the link. I don't get it though, on Nhs Inform it says limit to 4 cups, https://www.nhsinform.scot/ready-steady-baby/pregnancy/looking-after-yourself-and-your-baby/eating-well-in-pregnancy/ under herbal teas
"During pregnancy you should:

• have no more than 4 cups of herbal or green tea a day as there isn’t enough evidence about their effect on developing babies"

Why would they give confusing information? 🙁 And anyway how big is a cup?

I know it's not ideal, but throughout the first trimester Tango would help the nausea and was the only thing I could reliably drink.

17 weeks now and have started forcing myself to drink more water (by drinking squash, hate plain water) as my wee was very not a good colour, but still drinking pop.

I know it's unhealthy, and pre pregnancy I actually drank mostly squash, but for pop just really hits different now and doesn't make me feel sick. I also drink a fair bit of milk (sometimes flavoured)

Pepsi max, tango and fizzy vimto have been the go to. As well as non alcoholic beers.

@Petris123 That’s odd, there must be different guidelines in Scotland. Both pages look to have been updated recently too. It’s confusing but I would take that as enough information to not worry about how much you have had so far as it’s within the guide limit on one of the pages anyway.

Water made me throw up. I like squash so mainly that. Liptons iced tea was good but quite sugar heavy so not something to drink much of. I found most fizzy drinks made my acid reflux worse.

I have enjoyed the odd mocktail. J20 have some nice canned ones. Belvoir have some nice bottled ones too.

@OopsieeDaisy thank you, I'll try not to stress.
@FlyingHighFlyingLow i loove lipton ice tea but i think too much caffeine for me unfortunately (gives me palpitations). Shame I'm not a huge fan of squash, which brands/flavours do you like?

I'd personally stick to water with added squash without the added artificial sweeteners. Rocks do an additive free squash which I buy from Tesco and Sainsbury's

I drink coke zero, like always!
Also water and fruit juices!

Good Earth from the coop and ocado has ginger lemon and turmeric tea with no bad ingredients. Plus Kukicha tea is very low in caffeine(I just discovered) but it might not he palatable in first trimester!

I've been reading about all the health benefits of kefir during pregnancy (like lowering the risk of preeclampsia), but then also read it contains some alcohol (biotiful milk based kefir apparently has 0.2% according to their website), what do you all think? Has anyone had any?

Orange juice has around 0.5% alcohol, and many other natural things have a low alcohol content.

The beers in my fridge have a 0.5% content, it's all considered non alcoholic
and safe for pregnancy

In fact, we give actual young children orange juice and apple juice, both of which have low alcohol contents. Perfectly safe.

That is almost no alcohol, alcohol free beer and some ripe fruits have higher levels :) The guidelines were changed to a zero tolerance approach for alcohol as they can’t ethically do studies on safe alcohol limits, although many countries have a pre pragmatic approach and limit to a small glass of wine equivalent a couple of times a week.

I drank a lot of womankind tea by Pukka when pregnant.

I might be interpreting this wrongly but you sound quite anxious OP. Pregnancy is a tricky time for that because so much is outside of your control but if it’s affecting more than your drinks choices, might be worth exploring options to support you. Good luck!