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If only morning sickness stayed true to its name, right?
Unfortunately pregnancy-related nausea can and will strike
whenever it pleases. They should really call it morning, noon and
night sickness. Without fail, I would feel the urge to purge every
afternoon around 4:00pm.Trying to find the nearest toilet became
something of a parlour game during my first trimester.
I found my best fight against nausea was making sure I was
never hungry. I quickly discovered that an empty stomach was an
invitation for queasiness. Crackers became my best defence and
keeping a packet of them on me at all times became essential.
Evening time was not much better; if I had eaten dinner too early,
the nausea would come back for more. That bag of crackers was
transported from my handbag to my night stand. Even if I had
already brushed my teeth, I’d give myself a pass to munch on a
cracker before going to bed and it helped every time.
I’m not sure why they call it morning
sickness when I feel the most nauseous at
night. How can I quell my queasiness when
I’m trying to get some shut eye?
My other saviour was ginger. I bought bagfuls of chewy ginger
sweets during pregnancy and became addicted to them. Ginger
helps fight nausea like a champ so find your favourite way to ingest
it, like tea or sweets, and go crazy. I also loved acupressure wrist
bands, which have a knob that presses against an acupressure
point on the inside of your wrist. I truly believe they did work, but
it may have also been the placebo effect!
The strategies for fighting morning sickness at night are not that
much different than keeping it at bay during the day. The only
difference is you’ll need to keep your anti-throw up arsenal near
your bed for easy access. A drop of a nausea-fighting essential
oil could help stave off the need to pray to the porcelain gods. Try
dropping peppermint, ginger or lavender essential oil onto your
pillow before you go to sleep.