Before I write this I just want to say I understand that many people are unable to get pregnant, struggle for years (I mean look at Jennie) and want nothing more than to be pregnant. I get that. But I unfortunately had a really rough pregnancy and although I was excited for the baby at the end of it all--I hated being pregnant.
I have two words for you--Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG). Have you heard of it? Probably not, I hadn't either. It only affects an estimated 2% of pregnant people--and guess who fell into that lucky 2%. I've known a lot of people who have been pregnant in my life and not one of them told me that you could be sick your entire pregnancy. HG is a condition characterized by severe nausea, vomiting, weight loss, and electrolyte disturbance. Mild cases are treated with dietary changes, rest and antacids. More severe cases often require a stay in the hospital. The day that I hit six weeks pregnant I started vomiting. It was all day, every day--up to 10-15 times. I thought this was normal morning sickness until I started to ask around. Apparently most people just feel nauseous in their first trimester but don't actually throw up.
Our first appointment with the midwives I was lucky enough that the midwife we saw prescribed me Diclegis. Diclegis is basically a Unisom/B6 blend and is helpful with nausea and vomiting. At this point I was only 8 weeks pregnant and still thought I just had bad morning sickness--I still hadn't heard of HG. As my pregnancy progressed I looked forward to the end of the first trimester, I figured just like everyone else I knew my nausea and vomiting would let up. Boy was I wrong. The first trimester came and went and I was still sick. I hoped that with each new week I'd get some relief--I didn't understand why I was so sick. Even on the Diclegis I was still vomiting 3-5 times a day. I tried every home remedy there was for "morning sickness" and nothing worked. As gross and odd as it may sound some of the only food I could keep down were McDonald's cheeseburgers and Coke Zero. Water even made me nauseous.
I had a few days here and there once I hit about 20 weeks that I wasn't throwing up so I thought maybe it was finally gone and stopped taking the Diclegis for a day. That was a horrible mistake. Any time I tried to stop taking it or forgot to refill my prescription I spent all day vomiting. I honestly had not idea what was wrong. When I saw the midwives they just told me that some people are sick their entire pregnancy. It wasn't until I was venting on Facebook about how sick I was that someone invited me to a Facebook group for people with HG. It was like I found the holy land. Suddenly I was with a group of over 8,000 members who were going through what I was going through, I no longer felt alone and I had a name for what was happening.
I was never officially diagnosed with HG. But given everything I've read I believe I had mild/moderate HG. There are so many pregnant people who suffer so much worse than me. They have to get at home IV's or spend a ton of time in the ER for dehydration and other complications. I do find it fortunate that all I really had to deal with was nausea and vomiting. I did lose some weight in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, but not extreme weight loss like some people. I always forced myself to eat even though I knew it was going to come up later because I knew that baby needed nutrients. When you have HG you learn what foods and drinks are your safe foods. I could only ever eat a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, anything else came up. And as strange as it sounds I could only drink water until about 4:00pm and then it made me nauseous.
I was vomiting for almost 32 weeks straight. One of the longest stretches I went without vomiting was 8 days, and it was a glorious 8 days. Being that sick was debilitating. I could hardly function enough to get myself showered and to work. It was so hard to care for an infant/toddler during this time or really do anything other than lay down or sleep. I'm so grateful that I had Jennie to help take care of not only me, but Baby M, the dogs, and the house. I'm not sure what I would have done without her.
I don't think that I could ever handle being pregnant again. Jennie and I were just talking the other night and thinking about other ways to grow our family, but we did say that if I needed to get pregnant in the future we'd have to have more medical intervention--stronger medications--because there is no way I can just suck it up for the entire pregnancy again.
I wish that I could say pregnancy was all rainbows and unicorns, but it's not. It's tough. Luckily for me I didn't have too many other pregnancy ailments to deal with, but I would have traded a sore back for vomiting any day.
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