The honest truth about morning sickness

With Will and Kate announcing their pregnancy early due to Kate’s morning sickness, we thought it timely to share with you this post from one of our BabyBliss mums who suffered from terrible morning sickness. See if you can relate….

If ever there was a trial to prove motherhood is hard, Morning Sickness would have to be right up there in the evidence list.

I’m not saying it’s Exhibit A or B, which should clearly be occupied by such horrors as cold cups of tea and never getting to go to the toilet alone but once they got into the second week of the trial, in the pantheon of Crap Things About Being Mummying, it would definitely be worth tabling as Exhibit J or K.

Let’s start with the name: it’s a complete lie.

But then, I guess Unrelenting Nausea Except When You Eat and Only Then If You Eat The Right Food Which You Can’t Be Sure of Knowing, Punctuated By Actual Vomiting Sickness is a bit wordy.

I have not suffered as terribly as some from Welcome to Motherhood Sickness. I’ve been blessed to avoid trips to hospital to be put on a drip and I’m profoundly aware that some people have it worse than me.

This is cold solace to me as I ride the porcelain train.

I’m not a thrower upper by habit. In fact, I can count on one hand the times I have vomited and each one is etched in my mind with real certainty and a sense of dread. Prior to pregnancy, I had not made the Mouth Holding Toilet Dash for a very long time. While some people would sick up whenever they felt even slightly ill or often stick their fingers down their throat in some tragic emulation of Heathers during the late eighties (and sadly, countless years either side), I held on stoically nursing my practically non-existent hangovers or influenzas with nothing emerging projectile-like from my mouth.

This was a situation that suited me well and with which I had no complaints.

Imagine my delight when I broke my six year hiatus one morning as quite unexpectedly, I felt the first pricklings of nausea affecting my stomach and brain and then the tell tale mouth watering heralding my vomit – signs so imprinted in the revulsion centres of my brain that I had not forgotten them over the six year Vomit Senescence. I texted my sister to say, “What a fantastic milestone!”

The first time this happened, my husband told me that this was good news in a way because studies show that women who have Motherhood is Really Hard Sickness are slightly less likely to miscarry.

He only said that once, though.

After the first time, I consulted my previously and currently pregnant friends to get tips on preventing it from recurring and they told me how silly I’d been to try and have a shower before eating and that I must ensure I ate first thing and then every two hours as this would hopefully solve all my woes (and have the happy byproduct of making me enormously fat, yay!).

I took this approach and it TOTALLY worked.

Until suddenly this morning, it didn’t.

I woke up early, feeling slightly more nauseous than normal and after grumbling for five minutes or so, my husband took pity on me and went to make me some toast and hot milk. Two foods I have ingested confidently in the past.

I lay in bed feeling happy about my lovely guy who arrived confidently shortly afterward with the food which I only got half way through before the tell tale signs arrived and I had to rush to the bathroom to find a hair tie. For some reason, vomiting also makes me tear up which helps with the sympathy from my husband, not that that was thin on the ground to start off with.

And so, I admit defeat. I don’t know how to stop it. This is the fourth time I have actually thrown up (which is a drop in the ocean compared to some poor women) and at 11 weeks 6 days, the 63rd day I have felt extremely sick. This truly and absolutely sucks and that’s all there is to say about it. The only thing good about vomiting is that for one brief shining moment afterwards, you don’t feel sick. It’s not enough to make it worthwhile by a long shot.

To conclude, allow me to share a graph that I made while feeling low-grade nausea.

Enjoy your vomit free day.

(Or if you are suffering from “Morning” Sickness, my deepest sympathies).

Photo credit: InSapphoWeTrust, William and Kate at Madame Tussaud’s New York