A friend of mine has been to the hospital for dehydration cause by morning sickness. The Doctors gave her a medicine to help, but its come to the point now where she cant keep ANYTHING down even the medicing... no crackers, ginger ale, nothing. Just wondering if anyone has any tricks to help ?? She is not currently Dehydrated, just really hungry!
Ultimately the only help for this is staying in the hospital with an IV drip keeping her going until she can eat/drink again.
She's probably not dehydrated now because she just got IV fluids. Once she's off it and she continues to unable to drink or eat, she will need IV fluids again. It's a cycle. It's important that her doctor determines if she has hyperemesis gravidarum so that she could get the right treatment. When I was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, I was on home health until the 20th week of my pregnancy, getting two bags of fluids per day.
"Tricks" mentioned online did not work for me. Medications did not work either. I tried Zofran for nausea and Reglan to allow food to pass through the digestive system quicker. Also tried Tigan, Vitamin B6+unisom, and Compazine. I was SUPER hungry, but I was able to find only two things I could keep down and ate what I was able to tolerate, which was minimal. I lost about 10 pounds.
She just needs to find the foods she's able to tolerate, but know that she might not find any in which case the only thing that will help is medical treatment.
Check out www.helpHER.org for more info on hyperemesis gravidarum.
Please urge her to get back to the ER and to be tough with them. She needs to use the term "hyperemesis gravidarum" as EBird's mom below describes. This can be a very serious condition and her doctor should already have checked to see if she has it -- it can endanger both baby and mother and requires serious treatment. She may just have very bad morning sickness that will pass, but if she has HG she needs IVs and may need a hospital stay or full bed rest -- but she needs to be examined and diagnosed, not sent home with meds she cannot even keep down. If she can't keep the meds down, they cannot help her. Push her to get back to medical care ASAP even if she is not feeling dehydrated -- and by the way, we can "feel" hydrated enough when we are actually dehydrated medically speaking. I hope she gets some doctors who have enough sense to see that a woman vomiting up medication needs different treatment.
Sea Bands, Zofran, peppermint. ♥
It's great she's feeling hungry rather than nauseous all the time. Has she tried phenergan? I had Hyperemesis Gravidarum during my pregnancy and received home IV therapy. Has she been diagnosed with Hyperemesis?
I didn't see anyone mention this below, but a lot of anti nausea medications can be taken rectally as well as orally. If she truly is unable to keep anything down, she needs to be treated for dehydration, & given a prescription/directed to OTC products that don't need to be swallowed. T.
Eta: not sure if I'm having a Monday or you added the not dehydrated line haha. That's excellent, hopefully she can get on some nausea meds and get to eating again.
Original: First, she needs to go back to the hospital or doctor and get stabilized and hydrated, then there's some options out there thst may or may not be appropriate medically for your friend that she and her doctor can discuss. Zofran comes in an orally disintegrating tablet, so it's absorbed pretty immediately without the opportunity to vomit it back up - but the sweet flavor made me super nauseous, and it's notorious for headaches and constipation, she'd def want to check with dr about adding a stool softener with that one. Phenergan can be compounded into a wrist gel, so obviously that can't be puked up. Downside is extreme drowsiness. Hopefully she won't be in this extreme state for long, but she needs to go back in ASAP - dehydration is extremely dangerous for her and the baby :(
I had hyperemesis gravidarum with both of my pregnancies. It gets worse with each one - for #1, I had oral Zofran to help me out. Didn't completely stop the vomiting - but took me from 40 times a day to just a handful. For #2, oral Zofran wasn't enough, had to rehydrate with hospital IV a few times and got a Zofran pump. She needs to make sure she isn't burning ketones.
I drank a protein/vit type drink first thing in the morning, sometimes sipping very slowly! and then that would settle my nausea so I could eat something a bit later. Ensure is one brand I can think of.
Most of my work colleagues use a comprehensive nutritional supplement that can be thinned down and sipped little by little all day. It's highly absorbable, so if they can keep it down for just a few minutes, there's good nutrition going in. I wouldn't do any of the thick products and certainly none that have emulsifiers (to stop the ingredients from separating) because those additives are so very hard to digest. And getting some sugars in can actually stop the nausea which is, ironically, made worse by having no food. Vicious cycle. That's why the IV drips with salt & sugar are given to pregnant women with hyper emesis.
My neighbor also found that salted almonds worked for her. More nutrition than in the saltines. Very small quantities at one time, obviously.
