Your period doesn’t come on the scheduled date, but you’re too busy to notice. One morning, you get up to brush your teeth and suddenly you feel nauseous. The breakfast you usually like looks unappetizing, but you think you have to work all morning, so you can barely eat something, and just after you eat it, your stomach flips inside and you have to run to the bathroom – you vomit.
Don’t think you’ve eaten badly, don’t think you’re sick, this is the first time your baby says hello to you.
A woman’s body undergoes a series of changes after pregnancy. The first change is the appearance of a substance called chorionic gonadotropin in the body, which I will refer to below as pregnancy hormone, not exact but good to remember. To determine if you are pregnant, the obstetrician and gynecologist will check for this substance in the blood or in the urine.
This substance protects the fetus and facilitates its implantation and development. If the level of this hormone is high or some people are sensitive, it will lead to poor appetite, nausea, vomiting, and in severe cases, severe vomiting that leads to dehydration, which we obstetricians call pregnancy vomiting.
Mild vomiting usually has no effect.
Many people experience a slight weight loss due to vomiting in early pregnancy. This is okay. This is because in early pregnancy, your baby doesn’t need many nutrients to develop yet.
But if severe vomiting occurs, you do need treatment. If you have severe vomiting, see your obstetrician, who will run a urine test to see if the urine is positive for ketones. If the urine is positive for ketone bodies, it means that the vomiting and hunger have reached a certain level of severity, affecting your metabolism and the acid-base balance in your body, and the ketone bodies are toxic to the fetus. Severe vomiting can also cause damage to the mucous membrane of the esophagus, and blood will be seen on the vomitus. Therefore, severe pregnancy vomiting needs to be treated.
How to treat it?
First, hydrate, glucose and vitamins. Short-term treatment is simply rehydration and glucose. More water in the body enhances the elimination of ketone bodies, and soon the urine ketone bodies will turn negative. Short-term positive urine ketone body has no effect on the baby. Vitamin B6 has a certain anti-vomiting effect. Short-term vomiting does not require supplementation of albumin and fatty ingredients.
Second, fasting Severe vomiting, may eat anything vomiting, drinking water will also trigger vomiting, this time need short-term fasting, let the gastrointestinal tract rest. Usually after the above treatment, as well as with the increase of pregnancy week, the vomiting will gradually improve, you can also gradually increase the food, eat some soft liquid, semi-liquid food, and gradually resume a normal diet after adaptation.
Some mothers-to-be have particularly severe vomiting, so in addition to supplemental nutrients, they should be given certain drugs to stop vomiting. These medications will not cause harm to the baby.
Pregnancy vomiting makes us so uncomfortable, but it suggests that your baby is safe, and once the embryo dies and the pregnancy hormones drop dramatically, the vomiting disappears.
It was mentioned above that pregnancy hormone has a similar effect to thyroid stimulating hormone, which causes the mother’s thyroid gland to synthesize more thyroxine. Thyroxine is essential in the process of neurological development of the fetus, and if the mother’s thyroid gland is hypothyroid, it may affect your baby’s brain development. Therefore, a mother who is pregnant with vomiting has a smarter baby.
Most mothers-to-be get better at pregnancy vomiting after 12 weeks of pregnancy. This is because the levels of pregnancy hormones in the body drop and level off at this time.
If you have severe and prolonged vomiting, additional tests should be done to rule out hyperthyroidism and stomach disorders.
Pregnancy hormones are similar in structure to thyroid stimulating hormones and can cause a slight hyperthyroidism, which we call hyperthyroidism in pregnancy, which is the cause of pregnancy vomiting. But some people are suffering from thyroid disease, primary hyperthyroidism, then this vomiting is severe and persistent. In addition to nutrient supplementation, anti-hyperthyroidism treatment is needed.
I remember working in Beijing more than 10 years ago, a doctor from Beijing University, who was pregnant for the first time in her 40s. She had severe vomiting after her pregnancy and was repeatedly hospitalized, but the doctors considered it pregnancy vomiting and gave only the most basic treatment. The vomiting continued until the fourth month of pregnancy, but it did not get better. The doctor thought something was wrong and suggested her to have a gastroscopy, which revealed that she had advanced gastric cancer.
Pregnancy vomiting is common. It is less common to have severe illnesses combined with pregnancy, but you can still see it occasionally. If you have severe and persistent pregnancy sickness, chances are your doctor will have you undergo a gastroscopy to rule out any digestive tract disorders.
The gastroscopy is a little uncomfortable, but tolerable.
Hopefully, you have a mild case of pregnancy sickness that is just tolerable and doesn’t last too long.