Your pregancy advice please for my poor friend.

[Cadbury]

She is a few weeks into her 3rd pregnancy. She had horrid morning sickness with the first two and not it is kicking in again with a vengence. She is feeling like she has been hit by a bus and is struggling to cope with even doing the bare minimum.

She is hoping to be signed off for a few weeks (she works nights) but wonders if anyone has any ideas or things that have worked for you to help you keep going and relieve symptoms.
Any thing you've taken to help the nausea?

Anything that is good as a pick you up?

Can she speak to her employers about changing to day shifts? Night shifts are very hard during pregnancy.

Also, has she tried the anti sickness wrist bands? They work by putting pressure onto an acupuncture point on the inside of the wrists.

Hi, Im a few weeks into my 4th pregnancy and have just come through the nausea period. I know it sounds daft, but whenever I felt really sick, I had something to eat which instantly made me feel better. I know its weird as the last thing you want to do is eat if you feel sick but it did work for me. I also felt like every bit of energy had been sucked out of me. You do forget what its like to feel normal.

Im glad she has the support of a wonderful friend like you. It does you good just to have a whinge to somebody.

With her other pregnancies did she have morning sickness throughout or for a short period.

I used peppermint oil on a cloth for nausea during laboour and it helped a lot - she would need to check if it is ok for early pregnancy. Otherwise traditional remedies are ginger.

Agree with Belgo, sickness bands from Boots, worked a trick for me.

Ginger capsules are supposed to work very well. Check and search on google as lots of studies give dosage suggestions. Also Vitamin B6 is supposed to be very good at reducing nausea and vomiting in many women. Dosages seem to vary between 25-75mg daily but have no history of adverse effects as far as I have seen. B6 seems to be commonly prescribed for morning sickness in America. She should check with her doc first though before taking anything, obviously.

All the other usual stuff about eating little and often and before bed, during the night if she wakes up etc worked for me.

Hope she feels better soon. Get her to look on the internet as there are loads of sites devoted to suggestions. Wrist bands for accupressure can work (but didn't for me) unfortunately!
Oh and also if she can fit it in / afford it, acupuncture is meant to work wonders too....maybe worth a session to see.

Best of luck and she has my sympathies - its horrid!

they are great ideas thanks for your advice.

frazzled - sadly she has no internet access hence me asking on her behalf. I suggested ginger to her already - it made my sckness worse but I know it help lots of others.

I don't know how much support she gets from family, but taking the older two off her hands would be good (if it's not already happening). I found that the sickness was at it's worst when I was tired.

Having a high-carbohydrate snack by the side of the bed was good for me too. I found that having a completely empty stomach made things worse, so it was good to have something either when I woke in the night, or first thing in the morning, before I had to get up.

I think she is carrying nuts and seeds around with her to snack on.

He older dc is at school with mine and her younger one goes to nursery most mornings I think. She can only rest and wants to be able to get on. I remember how frustrating it is

I used something called an i-trans for motion sickness that my husband got for me. I was utterly sceptical but it worked a treat - I can't recommend it highly enough.

Here is a link to the website it came from if your friend is interested: www.lifemaxuk.co.uk/

A bit expensive - but it worked for me when I felt too sick to eat. And who wants to pile on needless weight at this time, just to stave off sickness? Best of luck.

hi newmomma
have just looked at the lifemax website - LOL at some of the gadgets!!! The I-trans does look good but at £75 is it actually worth it? Did you try the normal sea-bands first ? (I'm just asking because I'm waiting for my 3rd pregnancy morning sickness to kick in like it did with my other 2, and I've tried the sea-bands normal acupressure bands before and they didn't do much for me - so wondering whether to splash out on this thing????) Did you wear it all the time, or just when you felt the most sick? Sorry for all the questions but have never seen this thing before!

bland snacks like toast, breastfast bars, biscuits worked for me. I would get terrible shskes if i got too hungry, even though i didnt want to eat. And as much sleep and reast as is physically possible!

Tell her to go to the Gp and get some antiemetics. Lots are very safe in pregnancy.

Thanks for those suggestions.

Will pass them on.