Morning Sickness (or evening sickness or all day sickness)

Emails from Friday:

Hi Dr Villers,
I got sick for the first time yesterday (came over me all of a sudden while eating lunch...pretty embarrassing), and ever since then, I just haven't felt well. I had to take a lost patient to the ER yesterday that had the symptoms of the norovirus (my nonclinical, paranoid diagnosis). It has made me paranoid...then getting sick today, when I thought I was getting out of the phase of the chance of morning sickness (1st trimester). Any advice or reason I'm got sick?
See you on the 29th for my next appointment!
Meredith

*Note to my readers: I work at MUSC Children's Hospital (the best Children's Hospital in the world in my book!), and since finding out I am pregnant, I tend to have an extra paranoia of getting sick.

Dr. Villers' Email:
"You should be past the morning sickness stage. Most morning sickness starts around 7 weeks and ends by 14 weeks. Although some women do have nausea and vomiting that persists longer.
Morning sickness (or evening sickness or all day sickness) usually is self-limited. You feel nauseated and may or may not get sick. But then you may feel ok for the rest of the day. A virus will make you sick constantly all day long. Plus you may have diarrhea and other associated symptoms. Also, other members of the household also may be sick as well. Although you may want your husband to experience morning sickness, it just doesn’t happen (ha ha...Dr. Villers might know me better than I thought!).

If you come in contact with a sick person, you need to wash your hands thoroughly. If you know that someone is sick, you should just avoid being around them if you can. If you get a virus, you should just make sure you stay very hydrated – drink, drink, drink. There is not much else you can do except give the virus time to resolve.

If you have pregnancy nausea, ginger tea can help settle your stomach. Also Vitamin B6 can help with some nausea. Some women find that the acupressure bands that you apply to your wrist for seasickness will also help relieve the symptoms. If that still doesn’t help, there are prescription medications for nausea that are safe for pregnant women. I usually recommend an acid blocker such as Zantac to help with the “sour stomach” feeling. Zantac also works well for women who get that nasty bile taste in the back of their throats (yikes...that sounds ROUGH...I hope I don't experience that!).

I hope this helps answer some of your questions. Your blog looks great!" (oh my!  my doc is reading!! cool huh!)
Margo (aka Dr. Villers)