I think you are on the right path here (also, congratulations!) I am one of those rare people who basically never gets nauseous during pregnancy. Last time around I felt a little icky a few times, but the only time I actually felt like vomiting, I was on a boat. And they gave me crackers for it!
But what I *do* have is blood sugar issues. I have reactive hypoglycemia--so if I eat too many sweets, my blood sugar tanks. It also just likes to drop if I haven't eaten in a while.
Over the years I've learned to manage my condition by making sure my blood sugar stays stable. For example, I start my day with coffee, milk, and protein (usually cheese) rather than cereal/oatmeal/fruit. I don't skip meals and I tend to carry protein-y snacks when I go out.
I didn't know all of this back when I was pregnant with my first. I would get up, eat a big bowl of cereal (and being an American, it was probably something super sweet like Froot Loops,) and then feel awful and go back to bed. Not nauseous, just exhausted. I should have been eating eggs and cheese! I would have been fine on protein. But cereal in the morning is a big no for me.
I think I feel my blood sugar crashes much more strongly than most people and that overwhelmed any nausea, or maybe replaced it, or I'm just not good at feeling nauseous... But either way, fixing my eating fixed the problem, and the rest of my pregnancies were fine.
Nice article. I suspect what you're on to is probably only about half of it, though - pregnancy nausea also makes a woman sensitive to genuine toxins from rotting food or the kind of bacteria that build up in an anaerobic environment. This is probably why evolution built morning sickness out of nausea, rather than, say, stomach pain; mothers who failed to avoid spoiled food risked losing their unborn babies.
My grandmother used to say "eat away headaches, starve away stomach aches", referring to the clever old people in the first half of the 20th century. That was indeed not the paleolithic. But I think they were correct that having stomach pains discourages eating. Pregnancy nausea does the trick to encourage and discourage eating at the same time: It encourages frequent eating of small amounts and discourages big meals.
Pregnancy nausea makes a woman sensitive to close to everything - of which a few things are dangerous. I can't say I'm sure you are wrong. I just think that if protection against poisons and pathogens were the main point, nature made a really bad job. Humans already prefer fresh meat to rotten meat. I assume a heightened sense of smell could push people from eating that rotten meat into abhorring it too much to find it edible. But pregnancy nausea doesn't just enhance usual preferences - it alters and distorts them in illogical ways.
I just read a book about the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. The author of that book stressed that the Hadza sometimes eat very bad meat killed by other predators. They simply don't find week-old carcases abhorrent enough to avoid. So the bad meat problem seems to be a real one. Obviously, the Hadza feel eating rotting meat pays off. Probably, it pays off less for pregnant women. But still, why can't nature just enhance the normal sense of disgust? Is it simply incapable of that? And why can't it do that during pregnancy as a whole? Although energy needs are higher in the third trimester, eating rotten meat shouldn't be a hit then either. Still, in later pregnancy most women have more or less identical food preferences as when not pregnant. It would be very interesting to know whether pregnant women among the Hadza eat as much rotten meat as others in different stages of pregnancy. But as usual, anthropologists don't ask my questions.
Pregnancy nausea is rough - it hit my wife pretty hard last time, and she asked the same questions. But while monotheists are always struggling to cope with complaints about design; taking responsibility for suboptimal adaptiveness is Mother's home turf. She doesn't pretend to be omnipotent, or omnibenevolent; She just makes antlers bigger and bigger, and turns scorpion digestive tracks into stingers. Problems in design might be addressed over a few thousand years, or not; She really does her best, you know, but She just doesn't have any kind of plan.
Seems like pregnancy nausea and exhaustion can get worse with age. In my experience it was better before 30.
Yes, I know, I shouldn't expect too much from nature. But sometimes nature seems extremely fine tuned too. I mean, they say women (who are not on the pill) actually prefer the smell of men with an immune system different from theirs. http://motluk.com/stories/ns.scent.of.a.man.html
I'm sure such studies could be better replicated. But if there is anything behind the results, to induce general pregnancy nausea for a few months in order to make pregnant women forego that rotten meat is extremely blunt in comparison. Especially since something akin to pregnancy nausea seems very old (provided that similar behavior has been observed in other animals).
Congratulations for the pregnancy, condolences for the nausea. I think this would be a good research topic, indeed. One problem, however, is the whole notion of 'pre-diabetic' is suspect. Having got a hold of the true idea that people who eventually go on to develop diabetes first go through a period of time when their blood sugar is elevated, but not elevated enough to be called diabetes, some people thought that calling the people with this level of blood sugar 'pre-diabetic' would be a very good idea. Scare the pants off of those people with somewhat elevated blood sugar levels so they will cut down on the refined sugar! But instead it turns out that there are a whole lot of people who just naturally have a higher blood sugar level. Many of them come from cultures that don't ingest a lot of refined sugar. They're not on the 'path to diabetes' and frightening them is not in their interests. Indeed, a subset of them show up with malnutrition and anorexia type eating disorders -- they developed an obsession to get their blood sugar levels down, while their bodies refused to cooperate because they really want to operate at a slightly elevated blood sugar level compared to the usual. It would be interesting to see how the pregnancies in that cohort went.
When it comes to fasting, this sort of thing used to happen to all humans, all of the time before the invention of agriculture made it possible to have 'regular food habits'. Some people advocate fasting one day a week all of the time to simulate this 'the hunters didn't catch anything so we are all hungry' effect. It would be interesting to see what effect a once-a-week fast had on their pregnancies, though the co-founders there would be pretty substantial.
I have to admit that I know very little about diabetes and medicine in general. I think it is a shame that a noob like me has to speculate about this - where all all real doctors? The two research papers about Ramadan fasting suggest that periodic fasting could be way more important than moderate alcohol use during pregnancy, for example. Still, focus lies at traditionel issues like alcohol.
Personally I'm a fan of periodic fasting. I don't do it for real, because I get too angry and that's not fair to my family. But I use it as an excuse not to "eat properly". Getting really hungry before eating anything substantial is a great concept, I think. That is one reason why I feel the effects of pregnancy nausea so clearly: It forces me into an uncomfortable "eating properly" regime.
I have thought a lot about what pregnant women without refrigerators nearby actually do when they are hit by pregnancy nausea. I really would like to read about what pregnancy is like in primitive societies, but I find only very few and very undetailed mentions. I guess it is much more difficult for people who haven't experienced pregnancy themselves to know which signs to look for and which questions to ask. I don't think I know of any field anthropologist who was also a mother.
To counteract pregnancy nausea, rather small amounts of food are helpful. I think that female gatherers in general have been able to access small amounts of food, also in times of scarcity. I once had a theory that pregnancy nausea could be a trigger for epigenetic development: A way for nature to know whether the environment really is tough or not. Pregnancy nausea forces its victim to look for scraps of food. If there really is no food, she will just be knocked out instead and some epigenetic trigger will make her child smaller and more adapted to a fast life strategy because that is better in a really tough environment. If the environment isn't really rough, the sufferer of pregnancy nausea will find at least something to eat. I have become less convinced that this idea is promising. If nothing else, it is extremely speculative. In any case I think pregnancy nausea is handicapping enough to push many of its victims to alter their behavior, also to some cost.
Ha ha, I mean, what is the technical solution? Recording it with the smartphone I don't have (thinking about it, I can get hold of a smartphone for the occasion). However, they start such sound checks at 24 weeks, and I'm something like 20 weeks now so it is a bit into the future.
The smartphone is the answer if you want to make it go. Just think, Tove, you and your little #6 can be famous persons! (It is six, right? Six is pretty good because it triples your genetic output, although you *could* have accomplished the same in only three pregnancies without Anders via diploid parthenogenesis)
I think you are on the right path here (also, congratulations!) I am one of those rare people who basically never gets nauseous during pregnancy. Last time around I felt a little icky a few times, but the only time I actually felt like vomiting, I was on a boat. And they gave me crackers for it!
But what I *do* have is blood sugar issues. I have reactive hypoglycemia--so if I eat too many sweets, my blood sugar tanks. It also just likes to drop if I haven't eaten in a while.
Over the years I've learned to manage my condition by making sure my blood sugar stays stable. For example, I start my day with coffee, milk, and protein (usually cheese) rather than cereal/oatmeal/fruit. I don't skip meals and I tend to carry protein-y snacks when I go out.
I didn't know all of this back when I was pregnant with my first. I would get up, eat a big bowl of cereal (and being an American, it was probably something super sweet like Froot Loops,) and then feel awful and go back to bed. Not nauseous, just exhausted. I should have been eating eggs and cheese! I would have been fine on protein. But cereal in the morning is a big no for me.
I think I feel my blood sugar crashes much more strongly than most people and that overwhelmed any nausea, or maybe replaced it, or I'm just not good at feeling nauseous... But either way, fixing my eating fixed the problem, and the rest of my pregnancies were fine.
I hope you feel better soon.
Thank you! I'm 11 weeks plus now, so I should soon be out of it, I think.
Sounds great to find a solution to this extreme fatigue. But so far I have failed to crack the code.
Nice article. I suspect what you're on to is probably only about half of it, though - pregnancy nausea also makes a woman sensitive to genuine toxins from rotting food or the kind of bacteria that build up in an anaerobic environment. This is probably why evolution built morning sickness out of nausea, rather than, say, stomach pain; mothers who failed to avoid spoiled food risked losing their unborn babies.
My grandmother used to say "eat away headaches, starve away stomach aches", referring to the clever old people in the first half of the 20th century. That was indeed not the paleolithic. But I think they were correct that having stomach pains discourages eating. Pregnancy nausea does the trick to encourage and discourage eating at the same time: It encourages frequent eating of small amounts and discourages big meals.
Pregnancy nausea makes a woman sensitive to close to everything - of which a few things are dangerous. I can't say I'm sure you are wrong. I just think that if protection against poisons and pathogens were the main point, nature made a really bad job. Humans already prefer fresh meat to rotten meat. I assume a heightened sense of smell could push people from eating that rotten meat into abhorring it too much to find it edible. But pregnancy nausea doesn't just enhance usual preferences - it alters and distorts them in illogical ways.
I just read a book about the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. The author of that book stressed that the Hadza sometimes eat very bad meat killed by other predators. They simply don't find week-old carcases abhorrent enough to avoid. So the bad meat problem seems to be a real one. Obviously, the Hadza feel eating rotting meat pays off. Probably, it pays off less for pregnant women. But still, why can't nature just enhance the normal sense of disgust? Is it simply incapable of that? And why can't it do that during pregnancy as a whole? Although energy needs are higher in the third trimester, eating rotten meat shouldn't be a hit then either. Still, in later pregnancy most women have more or less identical food preferences as when not pregnant. It would be very interesting to know whether pregnant women among the Hadza eat as much rotten meat as others in different stages of pregnancy. But as usual, anthropologists don't ask my questions.
Pregnancy nausea is rough - it hit my wife pretty hard last time, and she asked the same questions. But while monotheists are always struggling to cope with complaints about design; taking responsibility for suboptimal adaptiveness is Mother's home turf. She doesn't pretend to be omnipotent, or omnibenevolent; She just makes antlers bigger and bigger, and turns scorpion digestive tracks into stingers. Problems in design might be addressed over a few thousand years, or not; She really does her best, you know, but She just doesn't have any kind of plan.
Seems like pregnancy nausea and exhaustion can get worse with age. In my experience it was better before 30.
Yes, I know, I shouldn't expect too much from nature. But sometimes nature seems extremely fine tuned too. I mean, they say women (who are not on the pill) actually prefer the smell of men with an immune system different from theirs. http://motluk.com/stories/ns.scent.of.a.man.html
I'm sure such studies could be better replicated. But if there is anything behind the results, to induce general pregnancy nausea for a few months in order to make pregnant women forego that rotten meat is extremely blunt in comparison. Especially since something akin to pregnancy nausea seems very old (provided that similar behavior has been observed in other animals).
Congratulations for the pregnancy, condolences for the nausea. I think this would be a good research topic, indeed. One problem, however, is the whole notion of 'pre-diabetic' is suspect. Having got a hold of the true idea that people who eventually go on to develop diabetes first go through a period of time when their blood sugar is elevated, but not elevated enough to be called diabetes, some people thought that calling the people with this level of blood sugar 'pre-diabetic' would be a very good idea. Scare the pants off of those people with somewhat elevated blood sugar levels so they will cut down on the refined sugar! But instead it turns out that there are a whole lot of people who just naturally have a higher blood sugar level. Many of them come from cultures that don't ingest a lot of refined sugar. They're not on the 'path to diabetes' and frightening them is not in their interests. Indeed, a subset of them show up with malnutrition and anorexia type eating disorders -- they developed an obsession to get their blood sugar levels down, while their bodies refused to cooperate because they really want to operate at a slightly elevated blood sugar level compared to the usual. It would be interesting to see how the pregnancies in that cohort went.
When it comes to fasting, this sort of thing used to happen to all humans, all of the time before the invention of agriculture made it possible to have 'regular food habits'. Some people advocate fasting one day a week all of the time to simulate this 'the hunters didn't catch anything so we are all hungry' effect. It would be interesting to see what effect a once-a-week fast had on their pregnancies, though the co-founders there would be pretty substantial.
Thank you!
I have to admit that I know very little about diabetes and medicine in general. I think it is a shame that a noob like me has to speculate about this - where all all real doctors? The two research papers about Ramadan fasting suggest that periodic fasting could be way more important than moderate alcohol use during pregnancy, for example. Still, focus lies at traditionel issues like alcohol.
Personally I'm a fan of periodic fasting. I don't do it for real, because I get too angry and that's not fair to my family. But I use it as an excuse not to "eat properly". Getting really hungry before eating anything substantial is a great concept, I think. That is one reason why I feel the effects of pregnancy nausea so clearly: It forces me into an uncomfortable "eating properly" regime.
I have thought a lot about what pregnant women without refrigerators nearby actually do when they are hit by pregnancy nausea. I really would like to read about what pregnancy is like in primitive societies, but I find only very few and very undetailed mentions. I guess it is much more difficult for people who haven't experienced pregnancy themselves to know which signs to look for and which questions to ask. I don't think I know of any field anthropologist who was also a mother.
To counteract pregnancy nausea, rather small amounts of food are helpful. I think that female gatherers in general have been able to access small amounts of food, also in times of scarcity. I once had a theory that pregnancy nausea could be a trigger for epigenetic development: A way for nature to know whether the environment really is tough or not. Pregnancy nausea forces its victim to look for scraps of food. If there really is no food, she will just be knocked out instead and some epigenetic trigger will make her child smaller and more adapted to a fast life strategy because that is better in a really tough environment. If the environment isn't really rough, the sufferer of pregnancy nausea will find at least something to eat. I have become less convinced that this idea is promising. If nothing else, it is extremely speculative. In any case I think pregnancy nausea is handicapping enough to push many of its victims to alter their behavior, also to some cost.
Congratulations on the pregnancy!
Thank you!
So... if you get an ultrasound, would you be willing to record your baby's heartbeat for MK of Placental Mammal?
https://placentalmammal.substack.com/p/the-sound-of-silence/comment/17195093
In theory, absolutely. But I don't know how to do it in practice.
Maybe... try talking to them in Swedish?
Ha ha, I mean, what is the technical solution? Recording it with the smartphone I don't have (thinking about it, I can get hold of a smartphone for the occasion). However, they start such sound checks at 24 weeks, and I'm something like 20 weeks now so it is a bit into the future.
The smartphone is the answer if you want to make it go. Just think, Tove, you and your little #6 can be famous persons! (It is six, right? Six is pretty good because it triples your genetic output, although you *could* have accomplished the same in only three pregnancies without Anders via diploid parthenogenesis)