All in Sufferers stories
There is rather a lot of change in my life at the moment. You see my husband and I have decided to embrace the moment and take our three (very small) children off to see the world. We leave on Saturday and you can read about it here on my Adventures of Muma Dean blog.
I've talked a lot in the past about products which don't help relieve pregnancy sickness despite pseudo-science claiming they do. But that's not to say there aren't products out there that can genuinely help make your pregnancy more tolerable. This one has nothing to do with pregnancy sickness or relieving nausea but...
There is no doubt hyperemesis limits an awful lot of families. I personally know dozens of women who can not face going through pregnancy again despite wanting more children. Most of them already have one child but sadly some have none.
Hyperemesis Gravidarum has been the toughest experience of my life so far. That is not because my life has been ludicrously easy, admittedly it hasn't been particularly hard but I've had my fair share of s**t over my 33 years (33 really? I hear you ask... I know I only look 23 but alas it's true!).
Obviously if you can just hole up with your partner, whatever food and drink you can manage at the moment and some gentle Rom Com's then great – do it! However, if doing so risks inducing the wrath of the relatives from far and wide who are utterly convinced that you'll be cured by having your mind taken off it by trivial pursuits with tipsy aunties, then you may need a bit more of a survival guide...
When my fiancée told me at 05.26am on the 7th May 2013 that she was pregnant I firstly didn't know what to do - whether to jump up and scream, shout “OK honey” and go back to sleep, hug her and pat her on the back or grab my 'men's department' and shout they work and congratulate them!! I opted for the hug her and the typical male line “are you sure?”
This post is a reaction to a thread I read on the facebook support group last night. It made me sad and I was thinking about it in the early hours of the morning. The thread was about a lady who has miscarried after 3 weeks of severe hyperemesis gravidarum. This was her second child, a sibling for her 6 year old. She now feels she can not go through it again and that her child will have to remain as an only child. She is heart broken. This is a common story I hear and many HG babies are only children. Women often feel huge guilt and distress at "failing to give their child a sibling", something which society seems to think is essential!
For those of us working entirely immersed in the hyperemesis gravidarum world, (namely myself and Karen Lodge in the Pregnancy Sickness Support office working alongside each other, her answering the helpline and my engaging in research activity and education for healthcare professions) there can be periods of time where we really feel the impact of the work we are doing and we go home at the end of the day knowing that so many women in the UK are getting really great care and support for their HG, in part thanks to the work that we’re doing from our little office in Cornwall.
As those of you who have been through it know it is very hard to advocate for oneself when you are barely able to speak for throwing up. Hyperemesis Gravidarum can come on very suddenly and in a matter of days take a woman from the happiest moment of her life, when she got a positive pregnancy test, to the absolute worse moment of her life to date when she hasn't stopped being sick for days and is genuinely fearful for her life.
Facebook has lots of pros about it for organisations like Pregnancy Sickness Support. But recently for me it's become more FaceAche than FaceBook
