Morning sickness causes certainly do demand attention. When you’re in the middle of a bout of morning sickness, it’s only natural to wonder what on Earth could be going on with your body that’s making you feel so awful. After all, not every pregnant woman has to put up with weeks of nausea, so what makes the difference?

Well, there’s good news and bad. Medical science hasn’t yet pinned down exactly what happens in the body to cause nausea during pregnancy, but research has pointed out a few likely suspects. Among the probable causes, some are beyond your control, but there are also quite a few you can do something about.

Uncontrollable Factors
Of all morning sickness causes, the biggest culprit is the rising level of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), also known as the pregnancy hormone. You body starts producing this hormone shortly after conception and production levels continue to increase, topping out around the 14th week. This coincides exactly with the continual increase in morning sickness symptoms until the time they finally taper off.

There’s also evidence that suggests significant morning sickness is more likely if you’re carrying a girl. Moms-to-be carrying twins or multiples are also likely to experience significant morning sickness, due to the higher levels of hCG. The condition runs in families, too. If your mother or sisters battled morning sickness, you’re probably in for the same thing.

Controllable Factors
Of course, not all morning sickness causes are out of your control. Diet is a major factor in keeping nausea at bay. Simply following age old advice like eating a few crackers upon waking, having many small meals throughout the day, and avoiding fatty and spicy foods can help significantly.

Your enhanced sensitivity to strong odors can also lead to nausea, so do what you can to avoid food with potent aromas, cigarette smoke, and even strong perfumes and room fresheners.

Prenatal vitamins are another cause of queasiness in some women. If you suspect your vitamins of upsetting your stomach, make sure to take them with a large meal or a small meal before bed. If that doesn’t help, ask your doctor if it’s OK to stop taking them for a while or switch to one with less iron.

Even though doctors haven’t yet identified specific morning sickness causes, generations of mothers have come up with plenty of natural ways to quell the queasiness. Watch what you eat, get plenty of rest, and try out some home remedies like ginger tea and you should feel better soon.

You may have been suffering from nausea for a couple of weeks and then found your morning sickness gone. Is it cause for alarm? Will it come back? Here are the answers to those questions based on my own personal experience.

Typically morning sickness will first strike anywhere from 6-7 weeks, although it’s still quite normal for it to come earlier or later than that. Usually it will gradually get worse as the hormone levels in your body get higher.

Then a couple of weeks later, you wake up and you feel fine and your morning sickness seems to be gone. This is the point that many women panic because they think there is something wrong with their pregnancy. Although sometimes that is the case, your level of nausea shouldn’t be an indicator of the health of your baby.

Often times the reason that your morning sickness comes and goes at this point in your pregnancy is because the placenta will start taking over the production of hormones. Usually you’ll wake up the next morning and feel sick all over again and you’ll realize that you should have just enjoyed the day off from the misery!

Eventually you’ll start feeling better for longer periods at a time until hopefully your morning sickness is gone for good. Although some women are sick for the entire length of their pregnancy, that is not common. Once you hit the 2nd trimester, freedom from your morning sickness should be right around the corner.

Nausea early on in your pregnancy is no fun and finding a cure for morning sickness can be a difficult and tricky thing.  Instead of feeling discouraged, keep these two guidelines in mind when you are searching for relief.

1. What works for one woman, won’t necessarily work for another. You will probably receive a ton of advice on what to do for your morning sickness and you’ll probably hear more horror stories than you’ll care to.  Everyone has “thee solution” to end your nausea and you’ll often find yourself disappointed when it doesn’t work for you.  The problem is that the cause is morning sickness is not 100% clear, so different remedies may not work for everyone.  Instead of giving up, just try the next solution that you hear about and maybe you’ll be able to get some relief.
2. Just because something works for you one day, it may not work for you the next. This has got to be the absolute most frustrating part of it.  You suffer for so long and you finally find something that makes you feel half way decent.  Then the next day you try it again and it doesn’t even take the edge off your misery.  The only thing you can do in a situation like this is to just go back to square one and try more remedies.  You may even want to try some of the previous remedies that didn’t seem to help.

Finding the perfect cure for morning sickness will probably not be an easy task.  Remember that nausea comes and goes and not to get discouraged when you have these up and down feelings.  Take it one day at a time, keep trying new and old remedies until you can at least get a little relief and remember that eventually it WILL pass.

Of all the aches and annoyances that ail mothers to be, pregnancy morning sickness is by far the most common. Around 70% of all pregnant women go through this period of nausea and vomiting early in pregnancy.

As you’ve probably noticed, morning sickness isn’t limited to the earlier part of the day. In fact, the medical term is “nausea and vomiting in pregnancy” (NVP) or nausea gravidarum, Latin for nausea of pregnancy. The condition took on the name morning sickness only because for many women the nausea hits hardest in the morning and lessens throughout the day.

Pregnancy morning sickness typically makes its entrance in the middle of the first trimester, around week 4 to 6, although it can start earlier. Once the symptoms come on, they tend to get progressively worse for the next month. The good news, though, is that for the majority of women, symptoms completely disappear by week 14. There are those “lucky” few who experience morning sickness off and on throughout the whole pregnancy, though.

Medical science hasn’t determined the exact cause of pregnancy morning sickness, in part because there seems to be a variety of causes. Some, like increased hormone levels and genetic predisposition, are out of your control, but controllable factors like potent odors, certain foods, and skipping meals can also set your stomach churning. Fortunately, there are numerous home remedies for morning sickness, like sipping ginger tea, smelling lemons, and eating cabbage. Many of these natural cures do a good job of curbing queasiness, but for severe cases, OTC and prescription anti-nausea medications are available.

Perhaps surprisingly, there is a positive side to morning sickness. As miserable as a continually sick stomach is for the mom-to-be, baby won’t be any worse for wear. In fact, it’s thought the whole reason morning sickness occurs is to protect the developing fetus. Studies suggest that food aversions crop up to discourage the mother from ingesting anything that could harm the baby, such as alcohol and potentially harmful pathogens and phytochemicals.

When you’re dealing with pregnancy morning sickness, the important thing is to stay hydrated and try to get a reasonable amount of nutrient-rich food. Home remedies can do a lot to ease your discomfort, but the only real cure is time.