My first pregnancy, I thought I had horrid morning sickness. I was wrong. I threw up every day for 3 months at 7AM. I could set my watch by it. I was young and foolish. For subsequent pregnancies, I dreamt (and dream, since I’m on #3) of full night’s sleeps and single nausea bouts daily.
(bolding mine)
Who the HELL has told you morning sickness is “all in your head” and/or “not bad”? Are the still ambulatory? Conscious? Human? Holy crap, I think if I could’ve, I would’ve barfed right on them. I can almost understand “not bad” if some naive person extrapolates that their experience must be what everyone goes through, but all in your head? :eek: Bite my ever-expanding, bloated, flatulent ASS.
I didn’t know that about Charlotte Bronte. There’s a woman I know on one of the equestrian forums who has the worst case of morning sickness I have ever heard of–she’s hospitalized on a regular basis (even had her OB bitch out an ER doc once) and gets weekly IVs for nutrition. She has esophogial ulcers from all the vomiting (which is why she eats only soft foods, as everything else feels like razor blades on the way back up). Most recently, she’s been put on bedrest to try and force some weight on her by way of cutting her calorie burning. Last I heard, if that wasn’t going to take, they were going to hospitalize her for the remainder of her pregnancy, which mercifully isn’t much longer. Yup–she’s due in September, and has been this violently ill all along. FTR, while her body has taken a beating, her baby is fine.
At my worst, I vomited three times in one day. The average was once a day, usually in late afternoon/early evening, but toward the latter few weeks it kept creeping earlier and earlier. This was to my benefit in the classroom as I had last period prep; most of the time, I felt my worst when I had no students. However, by the end of the year, having to be excused an hour or two after lunch was not uncommon. (I will never forgot those peaches…GAH. I don’t know that I will ever be able to have canned peaches again.)
I’ve never been pregnant, but these stories sound downright unpleasant. My mom was a career woman, and she told me that whenever the waves of nausea swept over her while she was at the office, she would have to stop what she was doing, run to the restroom, and come back out and continue with her work as if nothing had happened. She had morning sickness for four months. Ugh, four months? I can barely stand being nauseated for one single day.
Can us guys give our stories? How about if we were at fault?
When we were expecting my oldest son, I was working nights in a computer chip fab (I guess that I was also pretty clueless about pregnancy.) The area that I worked in used ethyl lactate to clean the wafers. Wikipediasays that “the odor of ethyl lactate is mild, buttery, creamy, with hints of fruit and coconut.” Really, the smell is overpowering and about as pungent as rotten milk, if rotten milk was a completely artificial compound that could remove paint and smelled sickeningly sweet (with hints of fruit and coconut.)
One night, we had a spill, and I was the helpful guy who offered to clean up the mess. There were about six hours left in the shift, enough that I completely forgot about the spill by the time that I drove home. Yes, I went home and crawled over my wfe to get into bed. I never knew that someone could move as fast as she did to get to the bathroom.
Yeah, but then because of this I do have a “fun” morning sickness story.
I vomited, on and off, for the full 9 months. I had the same issues as Eleanor of Aquitaine, and could not stand to be a passenger, or I’d hurl.
I also had pre-eclampsia, and thus was induced right at 40 weeks.
So the morning of my scheduled induction, I drove myself and my (now ex) husband to the hospital. I drove up to a security guard, preggo out to >here< and asked him where I should park for labor and delivery, as I was going to have a baby.
He freaked. Glared at my husband, told me to get out of the car, all that. It was like 4am, and it took me a bit to get that he thought I was in labor.
And my poor ex-husband copped the brunt of it, because he was the asshole letting his pregnant wife, presumably in labor, drive not only herself but HIM to the hospital!
I puked twice before I got induced, BTW.
Oh, Gleena, that’s awesome!
I haven’t personally been told morning sickness is all in my head, but I know people who have been. I have been told that it’s not that bad.
Fun thing? I can’t stand the smell of my bathroom. It facilitates the puking process. I don’t know what it is- slight mildew? The drains? We keep cleaning it, and it still makes me nauseous.
Eek! I have a horrid fascination with morning sickness and other pregnancy symptom/problem stories, though I have never been pregnant myself. I wish you all less barfing, at least.
A friend of mine told me that when she was pregnant, she couldn’t stand many of her favorite foods and often wanted to eat things she had previously hated. She hates bacon, for example (obviously not a Doper) but loved it during pregnancy. That’s one part of the whole pregnancy thing that really freaks me out, for some reason.
My version of the “What to Expect” book strongly insinuated that morning sickness was all in our heads. I don’t have the book anymore or I’d go and look up that section. It was something about how women from cultures that don’t expect morning sickness don’t get it as often.
I was young and smug, the first time around, and I was pretty surprised to find myself even a little sick. And with that relatively mild experience behind me, I certainly didn’t “expect” the much more severe nausea the second time.
This is what my mom described during her pregnancy with me. The AM radio station would play the ten most popular songs during a specific time period every morning, and now whenever she hears “Turn, Turn, Turn” she has a toilet-hugging flashback.
One of my favourite pregnancy books said that when you are pregnant, you are no longer in the driver’s seat- she said that instead, you are bound and gagged in the trunk. I think it’s one of the very scary things about pregnancy- you really have no control.
I expected to not have morning sickness, my first time. Boy, was I wrong.
Well, okay, that makes me feel better… the moms around me are starting to give me “Okay, aren’t you over it yet??” looks. At least I don’t feel quite as bad; I think I could sustain this level of nausea through six more months if I absolutely have to, whereas a couple of weeks ago I was more like, “Just make it stop!” Though I have to admit that the possibility that I might have morning sickness worse next time if I do it again scares the holy crap out of me.
Yeah, count me in as another smug one who thought I was going to get off easy. Well, I did for the first two weeks… sigh.
I have to admit also that there must be something of a mental component in my case, in the sense that I have successfully kept myself from actually throwing up by doing stupid things like reciting series of numbers and trying to remember obscure song lyrics. This does not at all keep me from feeling nauseous, mind you, and I would never, ever, equate that to “it’s all in your head,” and anyone who says that ought to be shot.
On the way to our first prenatal app’t, my wife was overcome by a wave of unusually strong nausea and crouched on the sidewalk, retching but not actually vomiting.
More than the physical discomfort, she was concerned with what passersby might be thinking, since her doctor was proximate to an ALRT station with a reputation for being druggie central.
Between gagging, she kept saying “It’s okay, I’m pregnant!” to whoever might be in the vicinity.
Good times.
That’s so sweet.