Surviving Hyperemesis Gravidarum

As I reach the very end of this pregnancy (due date been and gone) my body and brain have cleverly erased all memories of what early pregnancy was like. The truth is the first 15 or so weeks of this pregnancy were far worse than with my previous two. Perhaps because I was carrying a girl this time?

One thing that kept me sane during those months was reading and rereading Susie Verrills brilliant blog post on Hyperemesis Gravidarum. By far the most honest and revealing account of what its like to suffer with something WAY beyond morning sickness. I used Susie’s words as a stark reminder that although I felt shit, their were many people out there in a far far worse place. Struggling on in the face of real adversity.

Since then I have been meaning to help raise more awareness of HG and am really grateful to Gemma for sharing her story.

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• On 19 January 2015 I was beyond ecstatic to learn that I was pregnant. We had been married for 4 months and couldn’t wait to have little mini versions of ourselves running around, so we were completely struck with joy and excitement when we realized we were really doing just that.

• The vomiting started on 2nd of February. The last time I was sick was on the 23rd of September, and little Florence was born on the 24th, a whole day early.

• I suffered from Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) – extreme sickness in pregnancy that Google tells me can result in nausea, weight loss and dehydration. That really isn’t the half of it. In writing this list I’ve done my best to explain what it is to live with HG, and offer some strategies that may help anyone struggling to live with it.

• Educate. If you have ever suffered from HG you will already be overfamiliar with how it ravages your body, corrodes your spirit and robs you of the joy of being pregnant.

• Of course, and I’d hope that it would be assumed, I was beyond happy to have conceived and reminded myself daily how lucky I was to have done so. But, and for those who have never witnessed HG with their own eyes, allow me a moment to have a really good moan (I really earned it) – it was really bloody awful. REALLY BLOODY AWFUL.

• Imagine the first few hours of the worst hangover you have ever had. But worse.

• Smells made me ill, sometimes smells that weren’t even there.

• I had burnt the back of my throat with stomach acid. I

• had friction burns on my elbows from propping myself up 20+ times a day just enough to be sick in a basin.

• I couldn’t keep down even the tiniest sips of water.

• I lost a stone and a half.

• Walking to the bathroom felt like I’d completed a 20-mile run.

• And I was trying to smile through it all- I was expected to smile through it all.

• And I couldn’t leave my bed- do not underestimate how isolating this can be.

• This, and so much more I’ve blocked from my memory, is what HG is. For me, it lasted 9 full months.

• As awful as it was, I know of others who have had it much worse. For me, it did become more manageable with medication, and subsided briefly around 25 weeks, but returned 4 weeks later.

• HG is not morning sickness, and without wanting to undermine anyone’s experience with morning sickness, the difference between the two must be better understood.

• If you know, you know. Yes, it is more than morning sickness. It’s more than that “all day sickness” women report to be suffering from. Because this was my first pregnancy, I had no benchmark for “normality”- like how do you know when it is beyond what is expected during pregnancy? Well, after two weeks of constant vomiting and realising my wedding ring kept slipping off my finger I knew something was really not right.

• But after seeing a doctor I was sent on my way with a two-week sickline and a look of vague sympathy that felt more like a prescription to “suck it up and get on with it”. But with Google as my only medical qualification I meekly headed back to my sick bed.

• It was only after my sister, the less dramatic of my siblings, told me I looked like I was dying that I knew something had to change. I was admitted to hospital within a few hours and where I remained for 3 days. After a super-strength IV concoction of vitamins and 6 litres of fluids I felt like a new woman. Briefly.

• Fight for medication if you need to. When I got home from hospital I felt amazing. I could finally focus on getting excited about being pregnant. For 8 hours.

• Then I threw up my antiemetic (anti-sickness drug)  and it spiralled very quickly. 24 hours later I was back in hospital with my soon to be BFF the saline drip hooked up to my arm. It’s amazing the difference hydration and a few (medically administered) jabs in the butt can make. But I had been lured into this false sense of wellbeing before and knew without additional medication it wouldn’t be too long until I was back. I cried when the midwife was discharging me, and begged her to give me something else to help me stay on top of the sickness, and eventually she got the Doc to give me a second antiemetic (which at the risk of sounding melodramatic, I believe totally saved my life).

• Battle One was mine.

• Battle Two was a little more difficult. Convincing my GP to continue to prescribe this miracle drug on the outside. BUT despite having never given this drug to a pregnant woman before (reserved only for chemo patients apparently), I persuaded him that my life and my sanity depended on it and left with the script desperately tucked into my bag.

• I collected that prescription every 10 days until I gave birth, and soon learnt that even a day without it would end with a sleepover in the antenatal ward.

• So, you know you. You know how bad things will get without intervention – don’t be afraid to fight for it.

• Stay on top of staying on top. At the time, I refused to take ownership of the thoughts that ran through my mind and suffocated my happiness and my hope at my lowest point.

• I have never been so conflicted in my life.

• This was a planned and already very loved baby, but in the darkness of those first few weeks I have to admit that if I had been offered an “out” I might have taken it.

• The guilt that comes with even a flicker of acknowledgement to these thoughts is crippling.

• How dare I even think such an awful thing when I was so lucky to be living out my dream. Given, not in the way I’d always imagined (which, for the record, was looking like Blake Lively when she was pregnant- Dream Big, my friends) but I know the heartbreak of those who aren’t so lucky, and I could never look them in the eye and confess to these selfish thoughts. But I was so weak and so beyond exhausted, and the sickness had entirely consumed me.

• I honestly couldn’t see how I was going to make it out the other side of this darkness and I was so deeply ashamed. I felt so alone. I felt like a total failure- how can you even be bad at being pregnant? It’s biologically what we were made for, and there I was, barely making it through the days.

• I was so angry. Why me? I couldn’t understand why coping with being pregnant was so beyond my capabilities, I’d always imagined popping out lots of babies and now I wasn’t sure I could even pop out the one. I was resentful of anyone else who was pregnant who seemed to be breezing through, and Lord save anyone who dared to complain to me that they too “suffered with morning sickness in the beginning”, before blossoming into this gorgeous glowing pregnant Goddess I could see in front of me. I was 16 weeks in, I was not glowing. I was not radiant. I was not excited. I was not happy. But I had to be everytime anyone asked how I was feeling.

• I felt like I’d become such a burden on my wonderfully supportive and understanding family and even I was sick of hearing myself say “I feel sick”.

• Looking back, I think this was because I didn’t have a space where I could have my thoughts and feelings understood. More than understood- validated. Taken seriously. Not that my family didn’t do these things – they did, and they did them with compassion and such love and support, but I still felt frustrated,  alone and misunderstood.

• Find someone who really Gets It. Talk about it. After I had Florence, I found friends who had been suffering too, but who also got caught up in the ideals of what’s expected of you when you’re expecting.

• Do not be ashamed. You are doing well if you even make it out of bed in the morning. Allow yourself to feel like crap, but commit to getting back on the saddle after a little wallow.

• Even in the wake of giving birth my experience still haunted me. I was certainly traumatised by it. I thought about how selfish it would be of me not to give her a sibling based on the possibility of having to go through that again. Yes- she was worth every single ounce of vomit and every needle in the bum, but how could I ever risk feeling like that again – with a toddler in tow?! I couldn’t look after myself for months, never mind parent.

• Around 1000 women a year chose to terminate their pregnancies due to the extreme effects of HG, so this really needs to be taken very seriously and treatments standardized and effected without struggle.

• Take your recovery seriously. Three weeks off work and I was feeling The Guilt. After being completely devoid of the ability to function beyond vomiting into a bowl, I returned to work.

• Even with all my medication, I was still unable to leave the house without my trusty Golden Cow butter tub which my dad, in a moment of true Ferguson genius, supplied as a sick catcher. It was perfect – big enough to hold even the biggest of vomiting episodes, and it had a lid. If you’ve ever had to throw up in a car, you will appreciate how important this was. I drove about for months, working with my new fav accessory never far from reach. WHY. WHY DID I FEEL I NEEDED TO GO TO WORK? I was very ill. If you’re vomiting so often that you can’t be without a portable sick bowl, you’re probably too sick to be at work. But I felt I had to be. I wasn’t sick-sick, I was just pregnant-sick. And I made myself worse by insisting I had to be there.

• Slow down- you are not an emergency service. People will cope without you, if ever there was a time you needed to rest, it is now. Work can wait. Don’t be motivated by guilt.

• Live the cliché. Round up the troops. It takes a village. Call for back up. You won’t get through HG without an entire team of supporters behind you. Use them and let them in. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, babysitting- delegate. Allow yourself the time and space to rest and recover, or at least to get on top of the symptoms.

• Have a Gingernut. LOLZ. Seriously – I didn’t realise the world was full of so many gingernut enthusiasts until I was pregnant. I’ve just thrown up an ice cube that took me 15 minutes to eat- but please- pass me the gingernuts! With all the best intentions in the world, people are genuinely shocked that you haven’t been eating one every few minutes if you’ve been feeling sick. It’s such an obvious choice of treatment!

• WELL. I’ll tell you now. I forced myself to eat ginger biscuits, ginger sweets and drank ginger ale, ginger beer and ginger tea, and I promise you that all it achieved was what I can only assume to be a lifelong aversion to ginger and a tenfold increase in already raging heartburn. If you have any friends who ever have the misfortune of suffering through HG, if you don’t want to lose them forever, do not mention the G word. Ever.

• But seriously, eat what you can, when you can (which I guarantee will be the second most popular recommendation- “little and often”). You probably won’t fancy a kale smoothie, and be ok with that for a while. Eating two cheeseburgers in a row is better than eating a salad and puking it up. It’s not a permanent diet choice and you really don’t need the guilt of your food choices to add to your long list of things to worry about. Take a good pregnancy supplement if you can stomach it and eat what you can while the waves of non-nausea strike.

• Reach out. Unfortunately for me, I discovered the readymade network of support that is the “Insta-mum” community after I had Florence. Since surrounding myself virtually with all these amazing women, I have heard so many re-assuring voices of HG survivors (Susie V, I’m looking at you!).

• There’s something to be said for hearing someone else talk about the horrors of matted hair, overactive saliva glands and phantom smells that follow you everywhere and make you gag. It made me feel a million times better about what I had been through- I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t a total drama queen. In fact, I did a damn good job of getting through it.

• Look for support locally, I’ve since discovered Pregnancy Sickness Support, a charity who strive to support and empower women going through or who have been through HG or severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. Being heard and being validated will make such a difference, and might just pull you through your darkest days.

• Plan a second pregnancy. But plan a second HG pregnancy- just in case. It’s not a case of falling into the trap of thinking negatively, it’s a case of being prepared.

• With Florence, I was totally ignorant of what was in store for me. I’d do anything to be ignorant again. The chances of HG reoccurring in subsequent pregnancies are very high (70-80%), but planning and getting your health professionals on board will really help. Look into pre-emptive care and medication, studies have shown these to be successful in reducing severity and duration if HG does happen again.

• I know fine well what I could be getting myself into if I was lucky enough to have another, and that is something I just cannot get too excited about. I have already said – she is absolutely worth every second, and for me, I think that will be my secret weapon.

• I knew she would be worth it when I was pregnant- but now I know just HOW worth it it all was, I feel it will be less of a mental struggle the next time.

• I also have the experience of what worked for me last time, and that will cut out a lot of vital ‘Trial and Error’ time, and I know where the line between ‘sick’ and needing medical attention lies, and will seek help as soon as that line is crossed.

• I know that it will end. And I know I would do it a million times over to have another baby.

• Waiting won’t reduce the chances of it happening, for me, it’s just about getting to the stage where I am ready to cope with that again.

• Plan for sickness friendly activities for other children, and accept all forms of help- human or tech-based entertainment will be welcomed warmly in my house.

• And I hate to be that person, but you really might not get it again. I mean- you absolutely might- but isn’t the thought that you might not a really wonderful one? It’s almost enough to make me take the leap. If I am sick, I know I will get through it, because isn’t that what mums do? And if Kate Middleton can do it in her L.K Bennett heels, I sure as hell can do it in my trusty Air Max 90’s.

** If you are suffering from HG and looking for more support, please contact PregnancySicknessSupport.Org **