I smoked pot for my debilitating nausea while pregnant

Clarissa Morales doesn’t care what mommy critics say — smoking weed while pregnant was the only thing that quelled her morning sickness.

“With my morning sickness, I was throwing up all the time and it included blood. I was tearing up my esophagus,” the 21-year-old mom told Caters News.

“Cannabis was the only thing that kept the nausea at bay.”

In addition to the debilitating nausea, she also experienced “deteriorated” mental health and used her medical marijuana, prescribed for a back fracture, as a remedy.

“I tried every other method possible to treat my ailments, but none of them worked,” she admitted.

Her controversial choice to smoke “plant medicine,” as she calls it, while pregnant has ignited a raucous debate online, as critics bash the mom for putting her unborn child at risk.

On TikTok, some videos have even been removed by the platform due to violating the app’s community guidelines. 

“It’s very stigmatized. I’ve lost countless TikTok accounts for just talking about it,” said Morales, who keeps her usage to a minimum.

“People put medicinal users along with recreational users, which is very frustrating because I’m not doing it for fun.”

But Morales, who is currently 32 weeks pregnant with her second child, says she had no other option.

“It’s not something that I enjoy doing, but what’s the other option, I’m throwing up in a hospital?” she said.

Morales had previously experienced miscarriages and was willing to do whatever it took to keep her first baby, who is just over 1 year old.

“I had to think about what method was going to work best and fastest,” she explained. “I had to really weigh the risk versus reward benefit, and there was more reward than anything.”

During her first pregnancy, she attempted to not consume cannabis in any form, but only made it three weeks before her “mental health soon deteriorated” and she resumed using her dispensary-bought pot.

While her daughter was born slightly underweight, she claimed doctors chalked it up to Morales’ dramatic weight loss while carrying her child — not the weed.

“Now she’s 13 months old, she’s actually advanced for her age,” she said. “She’s been crawling since she was four months old, and she properly started walking at 10 months.”

Now, Morales’ second child is “growing” and “measuring on time.”

Indeed, studies have shown that cannabis “suppresses nausea and vomiting,” according to the National Institutes of Health, and may even be considered a relatively safe and effective remedy for patients undergoing chemotherapy and other treatments that could turn the stomach.

However, marijuana usage has not been proven to be safe during pregnancy, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, regardless of what form it is taken in — eaten, smoked or vaped.

The plant packs an array of some 500 chemical compounds — such as its primary psychoactive ingredient, THC — and could pass from the mom to the baby through the placenta, potentially putting the fetus’ health at risk of growth reduction, low birth weight and brain development issues, as well as a heightened risk for pre-term birth or stillbirth.

Yet, Morales wants other mothers to do what’s best for them.

“You shouldn’t feel bad about trying to survive because you matter as well. Especially with mental health issues, being pregnant can really make your mind like go into a very dark place,” she said.

“You sometimes just need to do what you have to do to survive.”