Morning sickness is a horrible side effect of being pregnant. It can make every day a struggle. Not everyone dislikes it though! Those who are nervous due to a previous pregnancy loss can often find their nausea reassuring, when it’s too early to have a scan or feel the baby move yet. If you are finding your nausea a comfort, and then it gets better, please don’t panic. Due to changes in the rate of increase of hormone levels, it is very common for this improve. Other factors like how dehydrated you are can also impact the extent to which you feel sick and the symptom will vary from day to day.
Some lucky women don’t get any feelings of nausea at all, whilst others can have the most debilitating sickness that becomes a serious medical issue. So for those who are experiencing troublesome symptoms, when should you seek help, and what support is available?
I would like to bring your attention to a free online support service called pregnancy sickness support. This is run by a charity and has a fantastic website: https://www.pregnancysicknesssupport.org.uk/
Pregnancy sickness support offer a free helpline as well as webchat support. There is excellent content on the site providing information on how to manage and what medication can be taken if needed. There is also information for GPs on there. I am still regularly surprised in clinic to find that women with quite extreme sickness, who have seen several healthcare professionals have not yet been signposted to this resource. There is a huge psychological burden to pregnancy sickness, and the support available through this team is vital.
If you are unable to keep meals or fluids down, feeling unwell or struggling to cope with sickness, please call your GP. It is also important to contact them if you have other symptoms such as tummy pain, stinging when you pass urine, or any other new or unusual symptoms.
Your GP will assess whether they need to check for other causes. Often they will do a urine dip test to check for ketones, which indicate breakdown of energy stores. It is useful to check your weight and compare it to pre- pregnancy as we do not like to see significant weight loss. The GP may assess you using a “PUQE” score (great name, right!). If your vomiting is excessive your sickness will fall into the category of hyperemesis gravidarum. This is the medical name for excessive vomiting of pregnancy.
There are many, effective anti sickness medications available. Whilst no medication can be 100% guaranteed to be safe in pregnancy, we can be pretty confident that those with a longstanding experience of use, in the absence of reported harm, are safe. It is really important to get treatment if you are struggling to meet your, and the baby’s nutritional needs and becoming unwell.
In rare cases, if hyperemesis gravidarum cannot be managed successfully at home, a short admission or day case ward attendance is needed for fluids and treatment through a drip. Thankfully this does not happen very often.
I hope you have found this blog useful. Please seek help if you are struggling with sickness as you do not need to suffer alone!
Joanna Clark