Morning Sickness: But I’m Not Pregnant, I’m Adopting
About a month ago, I started having horrible nausea. This nausea is unmistakable. It is the exact same nausea I had with my pregnancies. It consisted of the dry throat, the marker stomach turns, and the hope that you’ll throw up because you think it may relieve some of the nausea. For me, it came on worse in the afternoons and kept getting worse until I finally gave in and went to bed. No, I was not/am not pregnant! However, the only way I could describe this nausea was comparing it to morning sickness. This nausea was exactly like the morning sickness I experience with my pregnancies. Anyone who has had morning sickness knows it comes with its own unmistakable trademark.
Ahhhhh….I had just committed to adopting baby Reese. Calling it “morning sickness” makes a little sense. My body was reacting to the fact that we are preparing for a baby and we had just made a very HUGE committment and were walking into the unknown journey of adoption. So, I started googling. I could not find ANYTHING about other adoptive mothers experiencing symptoms similar to morning sickness. So, then I just assumed I had gone off the deep end and created the nausea in my head.
However, then I started thinking about it a little more and decided I wasn’t completely crazy. Here’s some things I know that made me realize this was not just “psychosomatic morning sickness.”
- I had just begun preparing for a new baby. Even though my body was not pregnant, it makes sense that preparing for a child through adoption could trigger hormonal reactions, which could have triggered the nausea I experienced.
- I was under a lot of stress during those first two weeks and was anxiously trying to understand what our next steps were supposed to be in our adoption process. I will credit the fact that stress, anxiety, and life changes can cause nausea.
- Sometimes men have “sympathetic morning sickness” when their wives are experiencing morning sickness which tells me that if a man’s body can have a similar reaction just by osmosis, an adopting mother’s adoption morning sickness can definitely be a real thing!
So, knowing these three things, I started feeling better about myself. I will admit that I am a bit dingy in some areas, like I leave my keys in my front door when I come in from running errands (don’t tell any robber friends!), I have a tendency to bump my leg into my table corner at least once a day (there’s a constant bruise to prove it), and I sometimes call a friend at 5pm to tell her something only to be reminded that I already told her that in our morning conversation (yes, that happened today!) However I don’t think I’ve officially lost it. I think my theory on “Adoption Morning Sickness” makes sense.
We are now a month in to our adoption process and everything is going so smoothly! I am no longer experiencing nausea anymore. I guess you could compare this stage of our adoption process to the second trimester of a pregnancy! I feel good again and things are moving along.
What do you think? Am I just in denial about my mental health or do you think I have a theory going? Have you adopted and did you experience something similar in the beginning?
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What a crack up!! Same thing happened to me when we committed to adopting our little one, I remember crawling around on the floor trying to pick up something my kids had broken and feeling like…oh my gosh what have I done??? it will all pass You have no problems with your mental health.. Keep the Faith, your Reese is absolutely gorgeous, God Bless You on your Journey to her.
See, now, what would be really cool is if you started lactating or something when the baby came… if that happens, you DEFINITELY need to post on that!
McKenna, I don’t think you are crazy! I feel nauseated when something major is about to happen. I think this could totally be real. I hope you feel better soon!
[...] Morning sickness. It’s expected for bio moms, but for adoptive moms? [...]
I think it makes a lot of sense. I’m pregnant with my first, now 20 weeks+ and still suffering the nausea. I’m starting to think it makes more sense if it’s psychosomatic or brought on by stress/anxiety because I am that kind of person – if not brought on, certainly made worse. My elder sister has been pregnant with no morning sickness at all and she is fairly cocky and confident. My mum is more like me and had nausea and ms at the beginning of all her pregnancies. My nausea is getting easier to cope with, but is still there from a little while after getting up until I go to bed (by when it is much worse). I’ve suffered from physical signs of stress in the past, such as severe back pain and even the feeling of strangulation (pressure on throat from stress). The latter lasted until I got myself out of the stressful situation, then came back whenever I got a little stressed. The situation I was in was extreme and ongoing, something I felt was life changing. So I completely get it that it could happen when taking on such a huge life altering responsibility where there is no going back. It terrifies me and that’s something I need to learn to deal with, and hopefully I might get some relief from this horrid nausea before long! Thanks for an interesting read and good luck with everything.
Thank you for sharing I have been going through the same thing ever since we decided to adopt to toddlers. We are still waiting but I cant shake the morning sickness. Its nice to hear Im not completely insane. I even took a pregnancy test to be sure.