My Favorite First Trimester Survival Tips and Items

The first trimester of pregnancy is my least favorite trimester. Postpartum is even easier to me than the first trimester. Nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite, soreness; nothing about it is fun, but throughout my three pregnancies I have found some tips and items that have taken the edge off and help me be at least a bit functional.

My Favorite Items

My nausea has been quite extreme this time around, and these are the products that help significantly:

Pink Stork Nausea Sweets

Through my research I learned that many pregnant women experience a B6 deficiency during pregnancy. B6 helps our bodies produce the proteins that help decrease nausea, which is why a deficiency in B6 could contribute to nausea. These sweets taste like a candy cane and contain B6, peppermint oil, and cane sugar. They are also organic. These provide me some instant relief, and I am so happy to have found them. To me, they are a game changer.

Oyster Crackers

Keeping something in my stomach is very important in order to avoid nausea, since I find you can not only have nausea due to hormones but also nausea caused by an empty stomach. To me, oyster crackers work wonders over saltines. I do not know why, but they work much better as I feel they are drier.

Pickle Juice

If you experience a lot of vomiting, or are even just so nauseous that the thought of water is revolting, it is likely your electrolytes are low. Pickle juice is salty and easier to drink than a pinch of salt in water, and will help replace lost electrolytes. I find that if I am feeling very fatigued and nauseous, a couple of swigs of pickle juice helps quite a bit.

Warm Foods

Broth, lemon tea, and oatmeal are helpful to me when I feel like all I have been eating is oyster crackers and I need some nourishment. If you have aversions to chewing things or are just hungry but do not want to eat, sometimes it can be nice to sip on some warm broth to settle your stomach. I was recently introduced to the idea of gruel, which is made to help settle an upset stomach. Gruel is broth mixed with a very small amount of cornmeal, just enough to thicken the soup slightly. I will be working on a recipe to post in the near future.

My Favorite Tips

Avoid Sweets, Fatty/Greasy foods, and Carbonation

This is a game changer. This is something I learned during this pregnancy. I even tested it out on myself a few times by trying something sweet, carbonated, and greasy, and it is true that after eating these things, my nausea increased dramatically. Ginger ale is terrible for nausea, FYI. I did some research on whether or not it truly settles a nauseous stomach, and indeed it will do more harm than good. The "ginger" in the drink is so processed it may as well be fake, and most of the time it is. What you are left with is basically carbonated sugar water. That was disappointing to learn. Again, I tried drinking some to test my research, and indeed did not feel well afterwards, at all. If you find ginger helps you, make ginger tea by adding thinly sliced ginger to hot water and letting it steep for 10 minutes.

Get Good Sleep

Many times nausea is exacerbated by exhaustion. Have you ever worked hard all day in the heat and felt a bit ill at the end of the day? It is due to exhaustion. Getting good sleep is very helpful to me when it comes to nausea.

Fix Your Mindset

It is easy to sit around all day and all you can think about is how sick you are. I find that thinking about how thankful I am that I have another baby on the way, and the fact that I know the sickness is such a temporary part of the entire experience is very helpful to me. After all, I know that by the third trimester I won't be thinking about how sick I was during the first.

What are your favorite first trimester tips or items?

See you next Monday,

Mary