Reaching The Breaking Point

I find myself lying in bed with tears streaming down my face. As the liquid I so desperately need to keep in rolls down my cheeks, I know that I cannot continue as I have been. You see, I just spent the last 25 minutes emptying the contents of my stomach yet again. The meds aren’t working and their isn’t anything that can be done for me. I know that if this continues I won’t last much longer, and I hate to complain because I fought so hard to get pregnant that I don’t feel like I have the right to complain when something isn’t going so well.

I’ve kept track over the past week and a half of how often I am throwing up. Even with the anti nausea medication in my system, on average I spend between 4 and 6 hours vomiting every day. I puke so much that the hyperemesis could be considered a second job. When I spend so much time in the bathroom, I wondered if there is anything else I can do? The meds aren’t working and there isn’t much else that the doctors can do. They say it should subside by the start of my second trimester………a week away from now.

Yesterday I hit my breaking point. I was nauseous in the car the whole way back from my doctors office, damn near puked in the Taco Bell parking lot and then wound up barfing in the parking lot as my 4 year old and 7 month old nephews watched. It was miserable! I started doing some research into natural remedies for hyperemesis and came across some studies in which patients with hyperemesis found extreme relief from the nausea and vomiting by ingesting medical marijuana edibles. I looked into it quite profusely and decided to give it a try.

Research has shown that their is no difference in offspring that have been exposed and those who have not, and in fact can help the mother with morning sickness and depression. A study was done in Jamaica comparing children of [canabis] smoking and non smoking mothers. From birth to 1 month old there is no real difference between the children but from 1 month on children born to mothers who smoked pot were:

Up until 30 days after birth there are no signs of any differences. At 30 days a research study shows that infants exposed to cannabis in the uterus were more socially responsive and were more automatically stable at 30 days,their motor and autonomic systems were more robust, they were less irritable,they were less likely to demonstrate any imbalance of tone,they needed less examiner facilitation to become organized,they had better self-regulation and over all where better adjusted then their non exposed counterparts.

Please do not judge me and think I’m a horrible mother. When you spend anywhere from 4 to 14 hours a day throwing up, you will want relief. Marijuana has been legalized in Colorado for both medicinal and recreational purposes. I consulted with my doctor and the employees of a very reputable medical marijuana dispensary and came up with a solution that would hopefully provide me with relief from the vomiting without ingesting any of the carcinogens associated with smoking. What we came up with was a transdermal patch.

Basically the patch comes in a 2″x2″ square, containing 10mg of cannibanoids. The patch releases the cannabinoids directly into the blood stream, eliminating the need for it to be processed by the stomach and liver. With the patch, you don’t get a typical high. It mainly just relieves the symptoms without a high. There are several different options as far as patches go, the one most beneficial to me was the CBD patch. Taken from their website:

CBD (Cannabidiol): This cannabinoid provides a wonderland of health benefits. CBD has anti-inflammatory, anti-convulsive, anti-anxiety, anti-psychotic, anti-nausea, and anti-rheumatoid arthritis properties. It also has been show to treat inflammation, diabetes, cancer, PTSD, ADD and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers.

The tch and other carcinoginic properties are removed from the canabis, only leaving the cannibidiol.

I am not a smoker. In fact I have never smoked anything in my life. To me 10 mg of canabis was a pretty large dose but a lot more than I would get ingesting it or smoking it. This morning, I woke up at my parents and ran to the bathroom to puke after having taking the anti nausea medication just a few hours before. I had the patch with me so I decided to give it a try. I cut the patch into four 1″X1″ smaller patches and applied one to the top of my foot (essentially getting 2.5mg of cannabinoids rather than the full 10). In the 15 minutes it took me to put my shoes on and walk to work I felt so much better. The puking had stopped and I was down to a mild nausea. After an hour the nausea was nothing more than a bit of queasiness. I got an additional benefit of actually wanting to eat about 3 hours in. I couldn’t believe the difference between waking up and getting off work. The patch did wear off at about 4:30pm and the nausea and vomiting came back with a force. I made it through Walmart but spent 45 minutes in front of the toilet when I got home. I removed the patch I put on at 8:30am and put another one on. 10 minutes later the nausea was subsiding and I was able to withstand dinner. It’s amazing! I’m going to try it out again tomorrow and see if it’s a difference or not.

After 2 trips to the er for emergency fluids due to dehydration, 7 different medications to help control the vomiting and and approximated 500 hours in the bathroom “losing my lunch” I can’t believe the solution to my problem was a weed (no pun intended).

If you are interested in learning more about the studies being done on women who consume cannabis and their babies please click the following links:

Marijuana during pregnancy

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/03/20/researchers-study-neuroprotective-properties-in-cannabis/

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_pregnancy