Turned out that it wasn't really morning sickness at all. After treating it as morning sickness (trying to eat snacks and drink fluids to get things back on track) for a few rounds, I began to realize that I wasn't even able to keep down small amounts of fluids, much less English muffins or pecans. I called my clinic and spoke to a nurse (not a midwife, but one of the nurses at the clinic) around 8am and was told that it sounded like a virus that's going around. She advised me on what to eat and drink and when to call back if things weren't improving.
After 12 hours of throwing up, I called back and talked to the midwife on-call. She advised to try one more round of ice chips and pedialyte, but that she thought I should come in and get hooked up to an IV for fluids and Zofran and get checked out all-around. When she called back, I hadn't thrown up the ice chips and the small amount of pedialyte that I'd tried, but I wasn't feeling great. So she told me she wanted me to come in within the hour so that they could get things going. Before leaving for the hospital, I weighed myself and found that I was two pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight.
I went to the labor and delivery unit at St. Joe's. I won't pretend that I enjoyed my visit at the hospital, but I have to say that the experience only offered further confirmation of my decision to go with this practice of midwives. The midwife on call was not one that I'd met before our phone conversations, but I thought she was great. The nurses who took care of me were wonderful and supportive as well. They listened to me, they were conscientious of my needs and concerns, and they seemed calm and confident.
By the time I left, I was feeling hydrated and generally better, but weak from not having eaten in so long. Upon weighing myself back at home, I found that I was up two pounds (so back up to my pre-pregnancy weight). After arriving home yesterday, I was able to finish off some ice chips and then do pedialyte, a saltine cracker, and some white rice. I was surprised at how much the rice filled me up. I was so hungry that I thought I would be wanting to eat piles and piles of bananas, rice, applesauce and toast (the "BRAT" diet that was recommended to me), but instead I found that my belly felt very full after just a small bowl of rice. Since then it's been pretty much the same. I've been trying to stay hydrated, but it's actually kind of difficult to eat more than a small item at a time. As much as food sounds SO good and delicious, when it comes to actually eating it, it's harder than I'd expected.
It's weird, as a pregnant person, to have to go against all the pregnancy food recommendations. For example, the BRAT diet isn't very high in nutrients or protein. That's why, when I first started throwing up, it was so difficult to stop eating. Everything that you're told is that it's important to eat small meals and snacks in order to combat nausea. That it's incredibly important to keep your blood sugar even, for the baby. That high-protein snacks are the way to go. It was really difficult for me to stop the "this is what's best for a healthy pregnancy" track and start hearing the "this is what's best to make you stop vomiting" track.
The whole time when I was in the hospital and they were advising me to not rush back into eating foods too quickly, I kept thinking, "But I'm pregnant! I'm supposed to be eating every 2-3 hours and I haven't been able to eat any foods at all since yesterday. Surely my baby must be freaking out in there."
But I suppose on a short-term basis the baby will get its resources from somewhere if it really needs to. Which may explain why I lost so much weight. Although maybe that's normal for fluid loss with that much vomiting? I'd be interested to compare how much weight a person loses from a normal case of a stomach virus, in comparison to when they're pregnant. Does the body burn more fuel reserves to compensate when you're pregnant than otherwise?
Anyway, the point is that I'm okay and it looks as though the baby is okay too. The reassuring thing was that my Bambin@ was kicking pretty regularly throughout all of it.
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