Emilee Janitz always assumed being pregnant just meant she had to steer clear of alcohol and sushi.

But, five weeks into her first pregnancy, the then 27-year-old was wracked with brutal morning sickness.

The New Yorker struggled with a wave of nausea that left her constantly feeling as though she was going to throw up – and she did frequently, about three to five times a day.

Her mother and grandmother were stumped, neither having experienced the sickness during their pregnancies. Traditional remedies like ginger and peppermint tea were no help.

Distraught, Janitz arrived at her eight-week doctors appointment in tears, unsure what to do. 

That was when doctors suggested something she’d never considered: Vitamin B6 and Unisom, a common over-the-counter sleep aid that contains the active drug doxylamine.

Now 32 years old, she has since had two more pregnancies and says she swears by the ‘pretty miraculous’ combination.

She said it wasn’t a complete cure, but that it had dramatically reduced her symptoms and stopped her vomiting.

‘Nothing truly cures morning sickness,’ Janitz told the Daily Mail. ‘But, in my experience, the B6 definitely helps to take the edge off it’.

‘It did not stop me from throwing up, but it meant, in the periods in between vomiting, I had less intense feelings of nausea. Before, I would feel very sick, but after taking the supplement, it would be tolerable.’

She added: ‘When I started to take vitamin B6 alongside this other drug, it was like night and day. I stopped throwing up, so it felt pretty miraculous at the time.’

About 70 percent of pregnant women suffer from morning sickness during pregnancy, a feeling of nausea or vomiting that lasts until week 14.

In serious cases, where someone vomits more than three times a day and symptoms last into the second trimester, patients are diagnosed with the more serious version, hyperemesis gravidarum, which can lead to hospitalization.

It’s not clear what causes morning sickness, but doctors say it may be due to a shift in hormones or metabolism during pregnancy.

Vitamin B6 is a vital nutrient for fetal brain development and for a healthy immune system and is found in food sources including poultry, fish, potatoes and bananas. 

It has been touted as a potential treatment for morning sickness since at least the 1990s, after studies showed it has anti-nausea effects. Other studies showed it was safe to use in pregnancy and there is no evidence that it harms a fetus.

Doctors are not certain why it may help with morning sickness, but some say it may be because it allows the body make more mood-boosting chemicals, such as serotonin and dopamine, helping to rebalance hormone levels. 

For Janitz, following her doctor’s recommendation, she began to take 25 milligrams (mg) of vitamin B6 four times a day; first thing, at lunch, at dinner, and just before bed. She started to take the drug at the eight-week mark, when morning sickness is most intense.

She used a common over-the-counter pack of 250 tablets for $16.72 – equivalent to about 7 cents per tablet.

For the first week, she felt no different. But then, her symptoms started to ease.

Her vomiting reduced to twice a day and there were periods in between vomiting where she felt ‘alright’ again. At week 14, her symptoms stopped.

Morning sickness normally subsides at week 14, as women enter the second trimester, but Janitz told the Daily Mail she was sure that the supplement had helped to ease her symptoms before she got to that point.

For her second pregnancy, about a year later, Janitz started to take vitamin B6 a few weeks before she became pregnant.

This time, her morning sickness did not begin until week eight, three weeks later than in her first pregnancy. 

While she still had bouts of nausea and vomited twice during the pregnancy, it was much less than she experienced in her first pregnancy before the B6.

However the vitamin was not as helpful in her third pregnancy, about two years later. She took it beforehand, but was suddenly up against morning sickness similar to what she had experienced in her first pregnancy.

Distressed, she again turned to her doctor, who said that she should take her vitamin B6 alongside one dose of Unisom – an antihistamine – before going to bed. The drug is shown to be safe during pregnancy and can help to block signals in the body that make someone feel nauseous.

Janitz took 25mg tablets once a day, alongside taking vitamin B6 four times a day, and said the effects were almost immediate. A 16-tablet pack costs $12.88, about 80 cents per tablet.

‘I think I stopped getting physically sick, basically,’ she told the Daily Mail.

‘Before I had been told by doctors that Unisom is for if you’re having trouble sleeping, which I wasn’t. I wish I had known about it so much sooner.’

Hannah Gerber, 35, from Colorado, also found that taking doxylamine and vitamin B6 together eased her morning sickness.

Gerber and her partner battled for five years to get pregnant, spending tens of thousands on what they termed a ‘fertility safari,’ before finally crowdfunding for in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The pair were thrilled to find out it was successful in November last year and that Gerber was three weeks pregnant.

But at the six-week mark, she started to suffer from morning sickness, which left her with a sensation of nausea during the day that only worsened at night.

‘It was one of the most severe things I’ve ever experienced,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘It was like having a really bad stomach flu, only worse’.

After having no success trying to manage her symptoms by eating small meals every one to two hours and sniffing peppermint oil, which some suggest may help to ease nausea, Gerber searched for alternative treatments.

She was already taking doxylamine to help with her sleep after she began to struggle with poor sleep at week three.

That was when a friend who had struggled with morning sickness recommended that she should also start to take vitamin B6. She began to take 25mg chews four times a day.

‘It was pretty immediate, the easing of my symptoms, when I started to take one of those chews,’ she said.

‘It helped within five to 10 minutes. I would get a decrease in symptoms for about one to two hours.’

Gerber said they were not a cure-all, but added they made her symptoms ‘manageable’.

Like Janitz, she urged other women to consider them, saying there was ‘no martyrdom in waiting and seeing if you can manage on your own’.

Gerber is now in week 16 of her pregnancy and says she will keep taking both tablets. 

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says online that vitamin B6 and doxylamine can be used in the first trimester to treat morning sickness.

It recommends women take B6 on its own first and, if that doesn’t work, switch to the combination of the two.

ACOG doesn’t say when someone should switch to both, but other protocols suggest doing this within five days if symptoms do not ease on vitamin B6 alone.

Together, doxylamine and vitamin B6 are also sold as an FDA-approved prescription medication sold under the brand name Diclegis, which doctors may recommend to women to help ease morning sickness. 

However, because it can be expensive both with and without insurance, many women choose the over-the-counter method to save money.