There are a lot of side effects that come with being pregnant.
Some you come to expect. There will probably be stretch marks and all that extra hair you grew during your pregnancy is bound to fall back out. There are some things that I wasn’t expecting as a side effect, and I’m wondering if like my stretch marks they’ll remain for life?
What side effect is this? Well, since giving birth I’ve found that I can’t look at certain things without suddenly having the urge to purge.
I know it sounds crazy but stay with me for a moment. On both of my pregnancies, I had really severe morning sickness. I felt like I barely ate at all while I was pregnant because I couldn’t keep anything down, sometimes even water.
I probably should have gotten myself checked for hyperemesis gravidarum but I knew very little about it at the time.
Absolutely everything made me feel violently ill and I didn’t know myself in the hospital when they gave me toast after giving birth and I was actually able to enjoy it.
Unfortunately, those feelings of morning sickness have not completely gone away. My youngest is almost two years old and there are still things that set off my nausea.
Mostly these things are reminders of times when I had really bad bouts of morning sickness. It’s sort of like when you felt really ill after drinking a certain type of alcohol and now you can never look at it again.
There are certain foods, TV shows, books, places and clothes that if I catch sight of I’m dashing for the loo. There were lots of lovely dresses and tops that I wore in early pregnancy that I had to donate to charity shops, not because I didn’t want them anymore, but because when I look at them I suddenly felt queasy.
It’s the same with food. I’ve never really been able to enjoy sweets the way I did before I got pregnant because sweets like jellies were one of the worst culprits for setting off my morning sickness.
I also had to stop reading the Game of Thrones books because one chapter made me throw up violently and I’ve never been able to look at the book cover since.
I am a bit concerned that it is something that is going to be with me forever. The last time I was pregnant was 2017 and it’s not showing any signs of going away. It’s not really something that you can make get rid of with some ginger tea and a Rennie as it’s my mind that is setting it off and not my stomach. My stomach is just unfortunately dragged into the situation.
It’s not something that I’ve come across being discussed on parenting forums so I don’t really know how to make it stop other than perhaps hypnosis. If I do decide to go down that route I’ll let you know how I get on.
Did you have any weird side effects after giving birth?
