The truth about morning sickness

I'm going to take you back in time a bit here to when I was suffering morning sickness, and OMG! was I suffering!

It's name is a big fat lie - it should be called "spontaneous sickness" - it can attack at anytime with no warning!

I started with it at about week 6 and it didn't ease off until week 14. And let me tell you, it was hell! From the moment I woke up, I would have my head down the toilet dry heaving my empty tummy until I thought I'd cracked my ribs and produced a tiny glob of goo.

Everyone was giving me tips - try dry crackers, try ginger, try this and try that... it was enough advice to drive you crazy and none of the tips worked for me - I now can't even stomach the smell of ginger anymore!

For me I eventually found that nibbling a dry rich tea biscuit and sipping lemonade (the "homemade" sort) helped a little bit. It's a case of trial and error as there is no magic cure I'm affraid.

Getting ready for work was tough (before I got made redundant - grrr) I'd be dizzy and feeling sick in the shower and cleaning my teeth made me puke up the little bit of lemonade I'd managed to have.

Being lucky enough to have had a trip to New York early in pregnancy meant I had a stash of airline sick bags (Thank you Virgin Atlantic!) in my handbag and I can't tell you enough how handy these were! I'm sorry to my fellow packed commuter train passengers as there were several times when I needed to use a bag on the train! I had a constant supply of polo mints and I found that sea sickness travel bands helped a little sometimes.

Once my train arrived at charring cross, it was a race against time to make it to the ladies room with my 30p for the turnstile at the ready in the 50/50 chance of making it before I recreated the "wafer thin mint" scene from Monty Python.

By the time I arrived at work, I was exhausted and drained and already had a puke toll of 4, but by this time I actually felt like eating and made myself toast.

At various random stages through out the day I would have to leg it to the ladies room and as I hadn't made it public knowledge at this point that I was pregnant, it was pretty hard to do it quietly!

I did find that Pret's honey popcorn was great to nibble on when I couldn't face the thought of eating but desperately needed to eat! I seemed to constantly have a bag on the go for months!

One moment I was fine, the next I felt awful and had my sick bag at the ready! However, there were a few moments where I was caught short and left a sobbing, giggling mess where I didn't know if I was laughing or crying.

Que, The Old Navy store in New York, were shopping in the basement and I suddenly need to be sick, I look around in pure horror as I look for a bin, a toilet an anything... Then I spot the answer to my prayers- there is a restroom sign, I leg it over with lightning speed as I'm already holding a mouthful of goo with a worried hubby in tow but then I panic - it's a mensroom! I wildly point at the door and hubby understands to check if anyone is in it but too late! disaster strikes and the "wafer thin mint" scene is a reality all over the floor (this time it's a puzzling bright pink colour!) the mensroom was empty so I make a run for it and spend a further ten mins puking my guts out and emerge with mascara streaked down my cheeks and an embarrassing mess to try and tidy up (no idea why I was so worried about my mess, after all I was in a smelly dirty mensroom!). Needless to say, we didn't buy anything and quickly left the store!

There is also the incident with the shoes - Sitting at home watching TV with my hubby in the evening, having a lovely relaxing time but had a sudden sickness attack and legged it up the stairs but I didn't quite make it to the bathroom and what followed was a bright orange stinky mess all over the landing carpet, the walls and to my horror, my husband's work shoes! I had to scrub those shoes so many times with dettol to try and get all the chunks and smell out - only I failed and Hubby had to buy a new pair of work shoes....

After about week 14, the sickness did mostly go, however I still get the odd attack - even now it can happen randomly and at any time.

Emma in Bromley