My experience with hypermesis garvidariam
My first pregnancy was unplanned and, in fact, until I held my little girl in my arms and gazed into her eyes I didn’t know I loved children. Kids had never been a part of my life plan and perhaps that is a part of the reason why what I experienced during my first pregnancy was such a shock to me. I held a naive understanding of pregnancy - I thought pregnancy was a joyous time, that I would eat a lot, glow and morning sickness meant throwing up a few times but still being able to work...I never would have guessed that being pregnant would mean that I would’t be able to shower myself let alone leave the house for months.
A week after conception, week 4 of my pregnancy, my husband and I had dinner at the restaurant where we got married. We were happy, we just had a beautiful meal and I generally felt that my life was going gloriously. A few hours after we got home i started feeling nauseous and shortly began vomiting violently. It was nothing I had ever experienced, I felt like there was a clamp around my stomach while i was being shaken by the head. The nausea I felt was as bad as the day I was stuck on a little boat for 9 hours after Cyclone Abigail had just passed through Darwin and I get sea sick from catching a ferry ride across the harbor (there is a link between HG and motion sickness).
I was so nauseated I couldn’t sleep or be comfortable no matter how I moved, not even after I threw up did I get any reprieve. I thought my favourite three hatted restaurant had given me food poisoning and the GP treated it as such but test after test they found no bugs. The nausea never left me and from that night onwards for the next 8 months it haunted me to varying degrees 24/7.
It was two weeks after that night that I began to suspect that I was pregnant and two pregnancy tests confirmed this. By this time I had already lost 12.5% of my body weight and was now an emaciated 42 kgs. Quite apart from a pregnancy glow, I would lie in bed when i wasn’t throwing up or spitting into the my bedside bucket, my dull eyes stare out from a pale face, my hair unwashed matted. I only spoke when necessary because speaking made me puke. So did moving, sudden noises and smells many of which I used to enjoy. The cracked and bleeding lips would follow shortly and I would wear them like I used to wear lip gloss for the rest of my pregnancy.
I was pretty much bed ridden most of my first trimester. I felt like I had run a marathon the moment I woke up. Its hard to describe the exhaustion but I would stay still in bed even when I sorely needed to urinate because it took so much effort and mental gathering of energy to make it the two meters to the en-suite. I recall lying alone most days while my husband was at work, staring at the balustrade outside our bedroom door and fantasizing about jumping off it with a rope around my neck. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just felt doomed, the doctors I saw prescribed maxolon but the pill only made me more nauseated. I accepted (i know now wrongly) that there was nothing else that could be done and I would just have to deal with it. I didn’t think I could endure more weeks of the relentless suffering after what had already seemed an eternity. It was the thought that I had to do the right thing by my baby and everyone else I loved that kept me from actually fulfilling my fantasies.
Until my third trimester, I was unable to eat properly or look after myself properly. I had tongue ulcers, onycolysis (nail lifting) and I would later need two fillings in what my dentist had always described as a perfect mouth for toothpaste ads.
I felt that my original perception of myself of not being a mother was correct. My body just was’t built for it. This was natures way of punishing me for daring to venture down a road I didn’t deserve to go.
Every few minutes I would take a break from my dark thoughts to empty my mouth of frothing saliva into the trusty blue bucket I kept beside my bed. I had pytalism which often accompanies HG. I couldn’t swallow my own saliva - doing so would set me off vomiting. And I made so much more of it than normal. If I dared yawn it would squirt out like a water pistol. I was surprised at how much saliva I could produce considering how dark my urine was. To keep hydrated I sipped water often and sucked on electrolyte popsicles. I know I’m lucky I could do this as there are many HG sufferers who cannot keep down water no matter in what form (ice, with diluted juice). This I think is what kept me out of hospital.
My HG slowly transformed into what might be normal morning sickness. Sometime starting in my second trimester I would only get nauseated every afternoon and evening, dry retch frequently but would throw up only occasionally and not more than twice in any one day on no medication. I was still miserable and some days were harder than others but I could function.
My experience with HG makes my other pregnancy symptoms almost feel not worth mentioning, like the grazed elbow you got with the broken leg but some of these were also rare like HG and others while common and just annoying when coupled without everything else just made pregnancy that much more crappy. So I’ll mention the rest of them to paint a complete picture of what my first pregnancy and hopefully, people will stop advising someone they hardly know to enjoy their pregnancy. I heard it a lot and each time it hurt.
- a constant metallic taste in my mouth
- rhinitis of pregnancy - nasel congestion
- pruritic urticarial papules and plaques of pregnancy (PUPPP) or polymorphic eruption of pregnancy - itchy rash all over belly
- reflux
- Insomnia
- Incontinence
- joint pain
- restless leg
- leg cramps
- gas pain
- taunt tummy skin
- baby kicks can sometimes be painful and sometimes made me vomit
I’m writing this blog while pregnant for a second time. I had to think really long and hard about whether I could endure pregnancy again but I guess I just really really love kiddies and in times of happiness, which this last year has been, I have a tendency to be over optimistic. I thought maybe I wouldn’t get so sick again. I was wrong and ended up tearing the lining of my esophagus from vomiting so violently but my symptoms have started to ease much earlier this time around and I think this is because I treated it early, had more medical support, prepared myself with extra weight pre-pregnancy and haven’t pushed myself as hard as in my first pregnancy.
Nonetheless, this will be my last pregnancy. I would like more kids but I know I really just can’t go through HG again. Nor can I put my family through it one more time.
Right now I’m just counting down the days till I get my little reward.
