Natural Mama: Healthy choices for mother and baby

We all know that eating right is essential to good health, and that eating right during pregnancy is essential to the health of the developing baby.  But what do you do when suddenly your favorite vegetable makes you vomit, and all you can stomach is stuff like white bread, white rice, and cake?  Suddenly you are having problems with constipation, which only makes you feel worse.

This is what happened to me.  Eating right became more than a chore, it became an impossibility!  I wasted so much food because every week I would have a new adversion.  Things I could eat one week, made me gag the next.  Here’s some advice: don’t buy too much of anything, and don’t be afraid to ask your significant other to run to the store to get whatever you feel like you can eat at that moment.

So what do you eat when everything makes you sick?  Anything you can stomach.  Try, try, try to eat the healthiest thing possible, but don’t beat up on yourself if your version of fruit is a fruit popsicle.  Or if your well-balanced meal is none other than a nutrional shake that you gulp down real quick before zonking out again.  If the only protein you can eat is a hot dog, then so be it.  Perhaps you can look at a list of healthy food choices and something will pop out as palatable.  Try, but don’t beat yourself up about it.  Stress is not good for you or the baby.

When my morning sickness got so bad that I was throwing up multiple times a day, whether I ate anything or not, I had to go to the ER to get rehydrated.  Please do this if you have to.  It turned out that my misery was not only due to nausea, but heartburn also.  It was an acid party in my stomach.  That prescribed me two strong medications:  famatodine for the heartburn, and phenergan for the nausea.  I could not get by without either of those.  So much for a drug-free pregnancy.  The phenergan worked like a charm, but it made me so tired.  I slept about 18 hours a day.  When I was awake I was usually in bed.  My tummy still hurt, but at least I wasn’t vomiting.  I never felt “good” the entire time I was on phenergan.

Finally my midwife became concerned and wanted me off the phenergan.  She prescribed Unisom and vitamin B-6.  Half a tab of unisom and 50mg of B-6 morning and night, taken with food.  I actually skipped the morning dose of Unisom, but did the rest.  It worked.  The nausea was kept at bay, but my energy shot way up.  I actually have “good” days now.  I now sleep about 10 hours a day, instead of 18, so I can actually do something with my day.  I have the energy to cook again, and my appetite continues to improve.  My morning sickness days are behind me.

Please leave a comment if you have any advice on dealing with morning sickness and food adversions.