How to relieve morning sickness: what works, what to skip, when to call a doctor

Three things help most with morning sickness, and you can start all of them today. Eat small amounts often, so your stomach is never empty. Try ginger, in a tea, a capsule or a sweet. Ask your doctor or pharmacist about vitamin B6, which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the professional body for obstetricians in the United States, calls a safe over-the-counter treatment to try first.

Here is why each one is on the list. Small, frequent meals keep the stomach from getting empty, which is the single thing KKH and ACOG both tell you to aim for, and a few dry crackers before you get out of bed keep you from moving around on an empty stomach. Ginger is the one item with a little trial evidence behind it, though the evidence is thinner than the headlines suggest. Vitamin B6 is low risk to try, and if it is not enough, ACOG says your doctor can add another medicine to it.

Then there is the line between trying these at home and seeing someone. If you cannot keep any food or fluids down at all, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) says to see a doctor. Its full list of warning signs is further down this page.

How to relieve morning sickness: what works

What to eat, and when to eat it

The single rule every source on this page gives is the same one. Do not let the stomach get empty, because hunger makes nausea worse and an empty stomach is the worst time to move.

Keep something dry by the bed. KKH says to keep dry crackers or toast next to your bed if you are nauseous when you wake, and ACOG says to eat dry toast or crackers in the morning before you get out of bed, so you are not walking around on an empty stomach.

After that, small and often. ACOG suggests five or six mini meals a day, plus frequent bites of foods like nuts, fruit or crackers between them; HealthHub puts it as small but frequent meals, choosing foods high in carbohydrate such as bread and crackers; and KKH says frequent and smaller meals, and to limit food that is high in fat, spicy or fried.

Choose what you can keep down rather than what is meant to be healthy. ACOG says bland, low-fat foods are easy to digest and that the goal is to find foods you can eat and that stay down. If those foods do not appeal, try others.

Liquid is a separate job from food, and small sips beat a big glass. KKH says it is easier to have frequent small drinks than a large amount at one go, and suggests water, fruit juice, clear soups or frozen fruits; HealthHub says it helps to sip a small amount regularly rather than a large amount at one time; and a KKH consultant quoted by HealthXchange puts it at about 30ml an hour.

Skip the smells as well as the foods. KKH says to avoid tobacco smoke and any smell that makes you nauseated, and ACOG notes that foods and odours which never bothered you before might now set nausea off, so use a fan when cooking and let someone else take the rubbish out.

One small comfort from the same ACOG page. ACOG says the evidence supports taking a prenatal vitamin before and during pregnancy to lower the risk of severe nausea and vomiting, so keep taking it on the days you cannot face food.

One honest note on all of this. Cochrane found no studies of dietary or other lifestyle interventions in its update of the review of treatments for nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy. Nobody has tested the food advice in a trial. It is what hospitals tell you to do, and that is a different kind of evidence.

Ginger, and what the trials actually show

Ginger is the easiest thing on this page to try and the easiest to get wrong, because the shops sell it in forms your body handles differently. KKH names ginger tablets, dry ginger ale, ginger tea made with three to four slices of fresh ginger in hot water for five minutes, and peppermint tea. ACOG names ginger capsules, ginger candies, ginger ale made with real ginger, and ginger tea made from fresh grated ginger.

Here is the honest state of the research. Cochrane, the independent group that reviews trial evidence, looked at 41 randomised trials with 5,449 women in early pregnancy and found that ginger products may be helpful, but that the evidence of effectiveness was limited and not consistent, though three recent studies support ginger over placebo.

Cochrane is careful about what that means, and so should we. Its conclusion is that there is a lack of high-quality evidence to support any particular intervention, and it adds that this is not the same as saying the interventions studied are ineffective, but that there is insufficient strong evidence for any one intervention. Ginger is worth trying because both KKH and ACOG list it for pregnancy, and because three recent trials point its way. It is not a cure.

Vitamin B6, and the medicine behind it

Vitamin B6, which is also called pyridoxine, is the first medicine ACOG names and the only one HealthHub’s leaflet lists as a general option for nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. HealthHub describes it as something you may take with or without food and generally well tolerated.

Here is the order ACOG sets out. Diet and lifestyle changes first. Then vitamin B6, which it calls a safe over-the-counter treatment that may be tried first. Then doxylamine, a medicine sold in over-the-counter sleep aids, added if vitamin B6 alone does not relieve symptoms. Then, if those two are not enough, antiemetic drugs, which prevent vomiting and are prescribed for women the earlier options have not helped.

HealthHub’s leaflet on nausea and vomiting medicines in pregnancy, last reviewed on 12 June 2025, lists what is used in Singapore and who may get it. Pyridoxine on its own. A combined product of doxylamine and pyridoxine. Promethazine teoclate. Metoclopramide. Ondansetron, which the leaflet reserves for more severe nausea and vomiting from the second trimester onwards. The same leaflet says that in most cases nausea and vomiting in pregnancy does not need treatment with medication, and to see a doctor if your symptoms are severe or affecting your daily life.

Before any of that, ACOG says your doctor will want to know whether the nausea and vomiting is the usual kind or something else. The conditions it names are an ulcer, food-related illness, and thyroid or gallbladder disease. The signs that make a doctor look for those are nausea and vomiting that starts for the first time after 9 weeks of pregnancy, abdominal pain or tenderness, a fever, a headache, or a swollen thyroid gland.

HealthHub also makes a point worth keeping. It is important to rule out other causes of vomiting, and it names urinary tract infections among them, so that you get the right treatment rather than the one that suits pregnancy.

What to skip, or treat as unproven

Most of what circulates about morning sickness is harmless and some of it is sensible. A few things are sold harder than the evidence supports, and it is fair to say so.

Acupressure and acupuncture. Cochrane reviewed acupressure at the wrist point called P6, and pressure at the ear, and found the evidence limited. Acupuncture, whether at P6 or traditional points, showed no significant benefit for women in pregnancy. If you have already bought a wristband, that is the review’s reason not to buy a second one.

The bigger caution is not a product but a claim. Plenty of pages promise that one supplement, one diet or one routine will end morning sickness. Cochrane’s own words are the ones to keep: there is not enough strong evidence to back any single intervention, and that is not the same as saying none of them work. Take the small, cheap, low-risk steps. Be sceptical of anything that promises an end to it.

That said, the same review also found that the trials themselves were mixed in quality, and that most studies measured nausea in different ways, so the researchers could not pool the results. Reading that is a fairer picture than either “it works” or “it does not”.

When morning sickness starts, peaks and eases

It is common. KKH counts at least half of all pregnancies, and HealthHub, the Health Promotion Board’s consumer site, puts it at 3 in 4 pregnant women. A KKH consultant quoted by HealthXchange, SingHealth’s health site, says about 7 in 10 women have nausea or vomiting in pregnancy. All three figures as of October 2026.

On when it starts, the sources are close together: KKH says it usually starts around six weeks into the pregnancy, and its model-of-care page puts it at around four to six weeks pregnant; ACOG says nausea and vomiting of pregnancy usually starts before 9 weeks; and HealthXchange quotes the same KKH consultant giving a window of the sixth to the ninth weeks.

It eases somewhere between the 12th week and the 16th, and the pages overlap rather than agree on where inside that range. KKH says it settles by about 14 to 16 weeks, ACOG says that for most women it goes away by 14 weeks, and HealthHub says that in most cases the symptoms go away by the 12th week. HealthXchange, in the clearest of the four, says that in nine out of 10 women the symptoms are gone by the third month, and that about one in 10 are still having them after 20 weeks.

The KKH, HealthHub, HealthXchange and ACOG pages all give a start and an easing. None of them names a peak week. What they describe instead is the daily pattern, and KKH and HealthHub both say it can happen at any time of the day, or any stage of the pregnancy, which is why the name misleads.

Nobody knows the cause for certain. HealthHub puts it plainly: no one really knows what causes morning sickness, but it may be due to the hormonal changes of pregnancy. KKH says the symptoms may arise as a result of increasing levels of pregnancy hormones. ACOG’s own explainer says that no one knows for sure what causes the nausea and vomiting, that increasing levels of hormones may play a role, and that hormonal changes also heighten the sense of smell.

When ordinary morning sickness becomes hyperemesis gravidarum

A minority of pregnancies go further than nausea and a lost appetite. ACOG names the severe form hyperemesis gravidarum, short for HG, and says it happens in up to 3 per cent of pregnancies. HealthHub names it too, and says it may need medical attention.

How doctors tell the two apart comes down to weight and fluid. ACOG says HG may be diagnosed when a woman has lost 5 per cent of her pre-pregnancy weight and has other problems linked to dehydration or loss of body fluids. KKH and HealthHub set a different bar for seeing a doctor at all: severe vomiting, an inability to retain any food, and a loss of more than 10 per cent of your pre-pregnancy weight.

Left untreated, severe HG is not merely uncomfortable. HealthXchange, quoting a KKH consultant, lists serious maternal malnutrition, Wernicke’s disease, which is brain disease caused by a lack of vitamin B1, and Mallory-Weiss syndrome, which is bleeding from a tear in the lower oesophagus. It also notes that if there is too much weight loss there is a risk the baby will be smaller than average, and that HG tends to come back in a later pregnancy.

It is worth saying what HG is not. It is not a mood, and it is not a lack of toughness. A 2026 study in Nature Genetics compared 10,974 pregnancies with hyperemesis gravidarum against 461,461 without it, across European, Asian, African and Latino ancestries, and found ten gene associations with the condition. Four were already known and six were new. GDF15, a hormone whose gene is most active in the layer of cells that anchors the placenta to the womb, is one of the four that were already known. Severe pregnancy sickness has a measured biological cause, and it is treated as a medical condition.

On the reassuring side, ACOG says the condition usually does not harm your health or your baby’s, and that it does not mean your baby is sick. KKH also notes that losing weight in the first trimester is common, because of poor appetite, nausea and vomiting, and that weight comes back on once the sickness settles.

It is treated, not endured. KKH says there are effective anti-vomiting medications that are safe for you and your baby, and says to seek medical help early if you are unwell. HealthHub says the same, and adds that you may be admitted for intravenous fluids, which is a drip that puts fluid straight into a vein, and for your vomiting to be treated with medication.

When to call a doctor in Singapore

You do not have to decide whether this is bad enough on your own. KKH publishes a short list for nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, and it is short on purpose.

Weight is the other half of the test. KKH and HealthHub both say to see a doctor immediately if you have severe vomiting, cannot retain any food, and have lost more than 10 per cent of your pre-pregnancy weight. KKH’s own line on this is worth keeping, because it is the opposite of what most pages tell you: there are effective anti-vomiting medications that are safe for you and your baby, so do seek medical help early if you are unwell.

Dehydration has its own signs, and ACOG lists them so you do not have to guess. A small amount of dark urine. Being unable to urinate. Being unable to keep liquids down. Feeling dizzy or faint when you stand up. A racing or pounding heartbeat. If you cannot keep fluids down, that is the whole argument on its own.

Where you go depends on how the night went. If you are well enough to travel, your obstetrician or your polyclinic doctor is the first call. If you cannot manage getting there or you are getting worse, KKH runs a Urgent O&G Centre: a 24-hour walk-in centre at Basement 1 of Women’s Tower, for urgent obstetric and gynaecological conditions. KKH lists acute problems in early pregnancy, which it defines as under 22 weeks, among the problems it treats there.

If you have not booked your first antenatal appointment yet, our guide to when to visit a doctor to confirm a pregnancy in Singapore covers that side, and our comparison of public and private maternity care in Singapore explains what each route involves once you are in. The rest of our pregnancy guides in Singapore covers the weeks on either side of this one.

Your questions, answered

If you only do one thing today, sort out whether you are still in the home steps or past them. If you cannot tolerate any meals or fluids at all, if you feel exhausted and you are losing weight, or if you see blood in your vomit, see your gynae or your polyclinic doctor, or go to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, and do not wait it out.

Wei Chun

Founder & Editor

A Singapore parent writing the guide he wished he'd had — practical, calm, and grounded in what actually works.

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