(Not-Just-)Morning Sickness Food

[Chris Amirault]

My darling wife, Andrea, is about 12 weeks pregnant, and she's in the throes of "morning sickness." (If you've been pregnant, you know why that stupid phrase is in quotation marks: it doesn't just happen in the morning, and it isn't some little sickness -- it's a total-body existential dilemma. But I digress.)

This has thrown our household into a bit of a tizzy. As my presence on eGullet suggests, I like to cook -- a lot. It is my primary means of organizing the world in pleasing ways, of making my child, partner, and friends happy, and of satisfying who-knows-what primordial urges.

Morning sickness makes cooking difficult, to say the least. But I'm hell-bent to figure out how I can make this wonderful woman feel better, by providing some food that differs from baked potatoes once in a while.

So, here are my questions. Do any of you have food that actually seemed to help with morning sickness? Did you have favorite foods, recipes, or meals? And (sorry) were there specific things to stay away from due to their high levels of vomitrocity?

Thanks in advance!

[helenjp]

My DH was also determined to cook me out of morning sickness, but actually, a house with NO cooking smells may be what she needs!

Maybe try a cooking session after dinner, and leave it all ready in the fridge so it can be eaten cold next day?

This discussion just came up elsewhere, and cold food seems to help, whether cold subway sandwiches or cold smoothies.

There may be a very narrow range of stuff she feels like eating at the moment - just go with it, don't fret about nutrition unless she is severely ill.

Asking her what she wants and talking about food in detail are probably a bad idea...if she can tell you and then not think about it till she's eating it, so much the better!

A rest (in a room a LONG way from the kitchen!!) before meals can help.

If she can't eat what you've prepared, try not to feel bad about it...she WILL be more than ready for you to be in the kitchen when she's looking after babies and toddlers.

[fou de Bassan]

If you are lucky,"morning sickness" won't last much longer. And it's worth it ,trust me. So you have to live on boiled potatoes for a while. Painful, true, but not so bad for the greater good(not having vomit on your shoes). Just stay away from broccoli or members of the cabbage family and have saltines by your beloved's bedside at all times. Good luck and hang in there.

[fifi]

Oh my... this is an interesting topic because it is so quirky. For my first pregnancy with my daughter 34 years ago, I hardly had morning sickness at all. My OB attributed that to the fact that I was working for FDA at the time and we were analyzing pecans for E. coli and aflatoxin during my first trimester. Somehow we ended up snacking on pecans all the time and the additional vitamin B6 was his answer. However, I had a really hard time handling raw meat throughout the pregnancy. This is from a woman that had routinely cut up chickens, big pieces of pork, whatever. For some insane reason, veal was particularly noisome.

With my son, three years later, I didn't have a hard time at all... with anything as to food. (Lots of other troubles, though.)

A good friend of mine was having a baby fairly late in life and the one thing that got her back to eating was a baked chicken that I do with citrus and coconut milk. (Sorry that recipeGullet is down right now or I would point to it.) She said that the tart tang was what appealed to her. I had she and her husband over to dinner and she just about devoured half of an 8 pound roasting hen. That was a happy dance occasion due to the fact that my cooking had never been appreciated quite to that level.

I will go back to the word quirky. That is what it is and you never know what will work. Just roll with it. There will be lots of stories to tell later.

[Mooshmouse]

My DH was also determined to cook me out of morning sickness, but actually, a house with NO cooking smells may be what she needs!

[snip]

There may be a very narrow range of stuff she feels like eating at the moment - just go with it, don't fret about nutrition unless she is severely ill.

Asking her what she wants and talking about food in detail are probably a bad idea...if she can tell you and then not think about it till she's eating it, so much the better!

A rest (in a room a LONG way from the kitchen!!) before meals can help.

If she can't eat what you've prepared, try not to feel bad about it...she WILL be more than ready for you to be in the kitchen when she's looking after babies and toddlers.

←

Helen, I couldn't agree with you more. Chris, the good news is that your wife is 12 weeks pregnant. My morning, noon and night sickness started at about 6 weeks and then... poof... vanished into thin air at 12 1/2 weeks. I never actually threw up, thankfully, but do remember having the dry heaves once or twice. After that, the rest of the pregnancy was smooooth sailing. The full-scale food cravings weren't so significant and I went back to eating anything and everything, all sorts of ethnic and spicy food. They say what you eat affects your unborn child's food tolerances; as a result, my son now loves garlic and strong savoury tastes.

During the whole morning sickness phase, food smells were anathema. Especially chicken. I could smell a chicken cooking in a thousand different ways from a mile off and it'd make me run for the exit. The first episode of nausea hit one evening when my husband and I made a supermarket run to pick up some ingredients for a family dinner. Preface this by saying that the deli department was at the back corner of the store. No sooner did I walk through the entrance when, WHAMMO, the smell of BBQ chickens hit my nose and I turned and ran back outside. And these chickens weren't even in the cooker any more. They were under the heat lamps, bagged in sealed heat saver bags.

It wasn't until about 5 1/2 months into the pregnancy when anything remotely resembling chicken could touch my lips again. And I couldn't walk into a grocery store for about the same amount of time either. Needless to say, cooking was pretty much a complete write off. I had a handful of Wheat Thins crackers in the morning before even lifting my head from the pillow. That seemed to help. And I didn't deny myself any food fixations. One week it was mandarin oranges, tomato soup and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The next week it was strawberries and Campbell's chicken noodle soup (ack). Following that was kiwi fruit, blueberry milkshakes and strawberry cheesecake. Clearly, my body crying out for salt and Vitamin C. On the whole, simple soups and stews were very comforting to me. Easy to eat, easy to digest.

Go with what your wife's cravings are telling her to eat... it's what her body needs at that very moment. And get take out. Lots of takeout. If she wants hot food without the smell, and if precooking isn't an option, then that's the route to go.

All the best to you both!

[MobyP]

A nutritionist told me that I should think of morning sickness as a form of hypoglycemia. The body is making vast new demands on energy - the unfortunate and near impossible truth is to eat little and often. Proteins especially - so if not meat, then something like humous, etc, which helps refill the energy reserves.

[torakris]

Morning sickness, oh am I glad those does (hopefully ) are over.....

I had it really bad with #1 and ended up being hospitalized because I couldn't keep anything down, with #2 and #3 it was still bad but I was able to avoid hospitalization.

Everyone I talk to seems to crave slightly different foods but I have known of many that seem to prefer cold foods. I was addicted to cherry tomatoes and various fruits, also Subway sandwiches. Anything that was raw, I could have eaten sushi every night!

like it has been said before the smells are worse than the foods sometimes, it was the smells that would make me vomit more than the actual eating. Avoid cooking foods that have strong smells while cooking if she is in the house, even things that you don't think have a smell be very careful of. For me the rice cooking in a rice cooker would send me straight to the bathroom.

[lamb]

As many have said before me, it is not the food itself that can make "morning sickness" worse, but the smell of food.

In my case, morning, afternoon and evening sickness was made worse by smells, not always food related.

Perfume on the person next to me while commuting, the NYC subway system (gack-that can make anyone sick!!), but by far the smell of chicken sent me over the edge.

I lived on saltine crackers, and actually lost weight during my pregnancies during the first three months. Doctors were worried and monitored me closely, but I was able to escape being hospitalized. Fortunately, I woke up one day during the fourth month during both pregs, and VOILA - no more sickness.

In short, trying to find an acceptable menu during this time probably is a futile effort. Deal with it now, it will pass and then watch out - the feeding frenzy will probably begin !!

[Cusina]

uch. I hated "Morning Sickness". Mine continued through my fourth month.

Almonds helped for me; a small handful was enough to settle my stomach to be able to eat something a little more substantial. I agree with the poster above who suggested protein in small amounts all day long. But not chicken. I hate to admit that I got hooked on power bars during my first pregnancy as they could be eaten at my desk at work and required no prep. My second pregnancy I was all about fruit and yogurt and peanut butter toast. And tuna sub sandwiches... I know, weird.

[Toasted]

Unfortunately some women have morning sickiness all through their pregnancy. I am about 20 weeks along now and still get horribly sick when I smell banannas or certain kinds of chips. During the first six weeks I lived on cottage cheese and fresh fruit salads- nothing else even remotely seemed appealing. Now I'm back to eating a more varied diet most of the time so I think the worst is over.

[snowangel]

With #2, it was all day sickness, throughout the pregnancy. Smells were the worst, as the other's have said. To this day, I cannot stand the smell of a cooking parsnip. I learned to eat what I felt like, and, to echo the sentiments of some of the others, tangy foods seemed to go well. I had a stretch were the only things I could tolerate were lime sherbet and grapefruit.

I also learned to eat things that came back up easily (sorry about that). Tossed salad took on a new meaning!

With the other two, it was much easier, but I didn't think it eased up until closer to 18-20 weeks into the pregnancy.

[jetsie]

Three kids here, and each pregnancy I had very different foods/smells that either eased nausea or made me hurl. I became a human bloodhound during my pregnancies, too, which didn't help. I had 24-hour-a-day morning sickness for the entirety of two of my pregnancies. Whee.

Don't take it personally if your wife runs retching from the room when you're cooking something any non-pregnant person would find delectable. If you're lucky she won't tell you YOU stink, too.

The one thing that always helped me with nausea was to eat a deli-type dill pickle.

[Cleo]

I'm 33 weeks pregnant with my first child now and can totally relate to what a lot of people have said here. I was pretty nauseous from 6 weeks to about 13 weeks. Didn't actually throw up a lot, but had a constant feeling of nausea and did a lot of dry-heaving. It was nagging and just wouldn't go away. The worst time of day for me was right when I got home from work and had to think about dinner. Ugh.

Anyway, the thought of food was repulsive. It's funny that other people mentioned chicken, because I couldn't eat it either. The sight, smell or thought of it made me want to fling myself out the window! (Even now I can only eat chicken once in a while.) My doctor just said to eat whatever made me feel okay during that time, and not to stress about getting the right nutrients. I don't think I ate a vegetable during that time. I did eat a fair amount of macaroni & cheese--it seemed to work.

The other thing that was mentioned was talking about food. Don't keep talking about it. During the time when I wasn't feeling well, the absolute last thing I wanted to talk about was food. I couldn't even read food-related websites, e-gullet, or literally anything that mentioned food (including restaurant reviews, recipes, etc.). It was weird...my whole world had changed!

But right around 13 weeks I was sitting at my desk at work and suddenly realized that I felt better. I never thought that day would come!

People are constantly asking me if I've been craving anything, and the truth is that I really haven't had any odd cravings (I think my husband is secretly disappointed that I haven't sent him to the supermarket at 2am!)

I'm sure it's hard for her to believe while she's living it, but the feeling will go away! And then take advantage of the 2nd trimester...it really is when she'll feel the best!

[skrattypants]

ginger can help. if you can find the ginger people's "gin gins" (a hard ginger-flavored candy), it could be a lifesaver.

[therese]

Above all, smells. And not just food, but laundry detergent (I had to change brands when I was pregnant with my second child) and pipe smoke (one of my colleagues smoked a pipe with some sort of cherry tobacco, and to this day even the thought of it makes me queasy) and various other things. Basmati rice was absolutely hell.

I entertained for work quite a bit the second time around, and pretty much lived on plain baked potatoes for a couple of months.

Small frequent feeds of bland foods really does help. I once "outed" (inadvertently) a young woman who works with me, as I noted she was eating saltine crackers mid-morning and immediately inquired as to the status of the presumed gestation. Fortunately there were only men in the immediate vicinity (who had no idea what I was talking about), and she was able to keep her secret for another crucial month or so. It was a girl.

Morning sickness is, anecdotally at least, worse with girls.

[Timh]

Dude you're on your own! Deal with it. moms aren't all the same. just do what ever she want's and you'll be ok.

[Susan G]

ginger can help.  if you can find the ginger people's "gin gins" (a hard ginger-flavored candy), it could be a lifesaver.

←

Or the ginger tea carried by most Asian grocery stores. They come in foil packets, pre-sugared.

[tejon]

Ginger can be a big help - think candied ginger, ginger tea, ginger candy, etc. Peppermint tea can also help soothe queasiness a bit. The biggest tip I got from my midwife was to take some B6 first thing in the morning and work on getting more protein if possible. Both made a huge difference, especially taking the B6, and neither will do any harm to either mom or baby.

[wesza]

I would like to recommend that if your interested in trying, "Ginger" to alleviate some of the symptoms of morning sickness to try:

"Trader Joe's" Uncrystallized "Candied Ginger" imported by them from, "Thailand".

Another superior product is a "Freeze Dried", Ginger Beverage imported from China available at many Asian Grocers as "Xiang Yuan" Ginger Crystal Beverage in a high ginger concentrate low sugar in individual packets that is the finest Ginger Beverage available.

Whatever Ginger that you utilize I definitely suggest that you also take "Vitamin B-6" 100 MG Tablets generally available at "Walgreen's" at $3.99 per 100 Tablets.

This combination work's on almost every mother to be in many Asian and Russian Communities.

One thing that I've never been able to figure out is why so many woman seem to suddenly crave or prefer variations of, "Peanut Butter" on English Muffin's, Toast or often by the Spoonful during morning sickness ? I have known several that were only able to eat Peanut Butter to begin their day.

Irwin

[torakris]

ginger didn't really work for me, but lemon really did. besides a dark

plastic bag that I carried in my purse in case I needed to vomit in public I

always had some type of lemon hard candy.

When I had to make dinner I would wear a mask on my face, like a surgical

mask that doctors wear, this kept the smells at bay, but on days it was

really bad I would spray a little lemon scented water on the mask.

and like someone else mentioned I couldn't even think about food (and that

is all I normally think about!), I couldn't browse my cookbooks and I even

averted my eyes when a food commercial or food scene was on tv.....

[Chris Amirault]

Thanks to everyone for your posts. I've shared several with Andrea. Know that your suffering has helped another! Week thirteen approaches... fingers crossed!

[Kapuliperson]

I know crackers help/dry foods. :D

[Sarah74]

I ditto everything that everybody says - I am 19 weeks pregnant and it is only in the last two weeks that I have been able to even read about food, let alone eat anything. Oh, and the smell of alcohol - BLEARGH!!

I found cold food the best and also, as soon as I decided that I should eat, I had to go for it. Any wavering and the desire was completely gone. I really enjoyed mashed potatoes and peas when hot food was called for but the smell of the oven heating up was almost enough to put me off. My poor husband made lots of things that I thought I wanted and then ended up eating two portions himself!

Good luck to you both - it does pass.