What to expect when you're expecting (50 page)

Wash your clothes more often than usual, since fibers tend to hold on to odors. Use unscented detergent and softener, though, if the scented ones bother you (same goes for all your cleaning supplies).

Switch to unscented or lightly scented toiletries.

Ask those who are regularly within sniffing distance of you (and who you know well enough to ask) to be extra considerate of your sensitive smell status. Get your spouse to wash up, change his clothes, and brush his teeth after stopping for a chili cheeseburger. Request that friends and coworkers go easy on the perfume when they’re with you. And, of course, avoid people who are smoking.

Try to surround yourself with those scents (if there are any) that actually make you feel better. Mint, lemon, ginger, and cinnamon are more likely to be soothing, especially if you’re queasy, though some expectant moms suddenly embrace smells that invoke infants, such as baby powder.

“My morning sickness lasts all day. I’m afraid that I’m not keeping down enough food to nourish my baby.”

Welcome to the queasy club—a club that up to 75 percent of pregnant women belong to. Happily, though you and all the other miserable members are definitely feeling the effects of morning sickness—a misnamed malady, as you’ve already noticed, since it can strike morning, noon, night, or all three—your baby almost definitely isn’t. That’s because your baby’s nutritional needs are minuscule right now, just like your baby (who’s not even the size of a pea yet). Even women who have such a hard time keeping food down that they actu
ally lose weight during the first trimester aren’t hurting their babies, as long as they make up for the lost weight in later months. Which is usually pretty easy to do because the nausea and vomiting of morning sickness don’t generally linger much beyond the 12th to 14th week. (An occasional expectant mom continues to experience symptoms into the second trimester, and a very few, particularly those expecting multiples, may suffer some well into the third.)

What causes morning sickness? No one knows for sure, but there’s no shortage of theories, among them the high level of the pregnancy hormone hCG in the blood in the first trimester, elevated estrogen levels, gastroesophageal reflux (GER), the relative relaxation of muscle tissue in the digestive tract (which makes digestion less efficient), and the enhanced sense of smell that pregnant women develop.

Not all pregnant women experience morning sickness the same way. Some have only occasional queasy moments, others feel queasy round the clock but never vomit, others vomit once in a while, and still others vomit frequently. There are probably several reasons for these variations:

Hormone levels.
Higher-than-average levels (as when a woman is carrying multiple fetuses) can increase morning sickness; lower levels may minimize or eliminate it (though women with normal hormone levels may also experience little or no morning sickness).

Sensitivity.
Some brains have a nausea command post that’s more sensitive than others, which means they’re more likely to respond to hormones and other triggers of pregnancy queasiness. If you have a sensitive command center (you always get carsick or seasick, for instance), you’re more likely to have more severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. Never have a queasy day ordinarily? You’re less likely to have lots of them when you’re expecting.

Stress.
It’s well known that emotional stress can trigger gastrointestinal upset, so it’s not surprising that symptoms of morning sickness tend to worsen when stress strikes.

Fatigue.
Physical or mental fatigue can also exacerbate the symptoms of morning sickness (conversely, severe morning sickness can increase fatigue).

First-time pregnancy status.
Morning sickness is more common and tends to be more severe in first pregnancies, which supports the idea that both physical and emotional factors may be involved. Physically, the novice pregnant body is less prepared for the onslaught of hormones and other changes it’s experiencing than one that’s been there, done that. Emotionally, first timers are more likely to be subject to the kinds of anxieties and fears that can turn a stomach—while women in subsequent pregnancies may be distracted from their nausea by the demands of caring for older children. (Generalities never hold true for every expectant mom, though, and some women are queasier in subsequent pregnancies than they were in their first.)

No matter the cause (and does it really matter when you’re upchucking for the third time today?), the effect of morning sickness is the same: pure misery. Though there is no sure cure for the queasies but the passing of time, there are ways of minimizing the misery while you’re waiting for a less nauseous day to dawn:

Eat early. Morning sickness doesn’t wait for you to get up in the morning. In fact, nausea’s most likely to strike when you’re running on empty, as you
are after a long night’s sleep. That’s because when you haven’t eaten in a while, the acids churning around inside your empty tummy have nothing to digest but your stomach lining—which, not surprisingly, increases queasiness. To head off heaving, don’t even consider getting out of bed in the morning without reaching for a nibble (crackers or rice cakes, dry cereal, a handful of trail mix) that you stashed on your nightstand the night before. Keeping nibbles next to the bed also means you don’t have to get up for them if you wake up hungry in the middle of the night. It’s a good idea to have a bite when you rise for those midnight bathroom runs, too, just so your stomach stays a little bit full all night long.

Eat late. Eating a light snack high in protein and complex carbs (a muffin and a glass of milk, string cheese and a few dried apricots) just before you go to sleep will help ensure a happier tummy when you wake up.

Eat light. A stuffed tummy is just as susceptible to queasiness as an empty one. Overloading—even when you feel hungry—can lead to upchucking.

Eat often. One of the best ways to keep nausea at bay is to keep your blood sugar at an even keel—and your stomach a little filled—all the time. To head off an attack of the queasies, join the graze craze. Eat small, frequent meals—six mini meals a day is ideal—instead of three large ones. Don’t leave home without a stash of snacks that your tummy can handle (dried fruit and nuts, granola bars, dry cereal, crackers, soy chips, or pretzels).