Pregnancy Journal: Week Ten - Morning Sickness, Headaches, and Other Pregnancy Complaints

Let me just say to start with that I am very excited to be pregnant. My husband and I have a beautiful toddler daughter already, and this pregnancy is our very planned second child.

Now that I've made that clear, let me tell you about this week. Week ten has been rough. In my first pregnancy, I didn't have any morning sickness at all. None. It's only now that I realize how lucky I actually was.

This week I've had an upset tummy almost all week-not just in the morning. It's a horrible cycle because if you get hungry, then your nausea gets worse, but you don't feel like eating because you feel sick to your stomach. Morning sickness is actually really common in the first trimester, and all of the pregnancy books offer their own advice for how to tackle it. (My favourite was one of my pregnancy books that in their advice for the week simply says to prevent morning sickness.) Here's my take. Ginger biscuits and tea not only don't help, but just seeing them made my stomach roll over. What did help was to drink Horlicks. It was substantial enough to put something in my tummy and help keep nausea at bay (in fact, it's fortified with all kinds of good things like folic acid), and I found it much easier to sip that than to eat something.

I also had killer headaches this week. Apparently it's a common complaint at this stage of pregnancy because of rapidly raising levels of hormones. Unfortunately, knowing what causes it doesn't make it any better. I was told not to take anything for it as I'm still in the first trimester and medication passes through to the vulnerable baby, so I just curled up on the couch and waited it out. The only thing that seemed to have any effect was getting enough sleep, although that only took the edge off.

My heroes of the week were (A) my husband and (B) Tropicana. As I felt so icky all week, my husband just told me to rest and did everything: the cooking, cleaning, entertaining our daughter, and fetching my drinks and blankets. He was a star and didn't complain once. He just said it was good practice for when the baby was born.