Morning sickness (or as we like to call it, ‘all day sickness’) is one of the least enjoyable parts of pregnancy – in fairness, who likes sitting over the toilet bowl all day barfing? It’s horrible!
However, new scientific research has emerged that might help you cope with the round-the-clock nausea: apparently morning sickness has numerous benefits, not least that it can indicate a healthy pregnancy.
And while the idea that morning sickness is beneficial isn’t exactly new, previously there hasn’t been a lot of hard scientific evidence to prove it.
The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, observed over 800 pregnant women who had previously suffered miscarriage – recording their morning sickness – and concluded that women who experienced morning sickness by week eight were 75 percent less likely to miscarry.
“It's a common thought that nausea indicates a healthy pregnancy, but there wasn't a lot of high-quality evidence to support this belief,” Stefanie N. Hinkle, Ph.D, who was involved with the study, said. “Our study evaluates symptoms from the earliest weeks of pregnancy, immediately after conception, and confirms that there is a protective association between nausea and vomiting and a lower risk of pregnancy loss.”
However, if you don’t experience morning sickness, there is no reason to worry, assures Stefanie. This study observed women who has already miscarried, so it doesn’t necessarily represent the ‘average woman”.
“Not all pregnancies are the same, and every individual is different," she told The Atlantic. “So just because they do not have symptoms, does not mean that they will go on to have a loss.”
But the message here is clear, if you’re getting sick, and feel rubbish, you’re actually healthier than you might think.
“It's a hard time the first time you get pregnant, and then you throw on feeling sick and exhausted,” Stefanie told Time. “This should provide some solace and reassurance to women experiencing these symptoms that they have a healthy pregnancy.”
