A few days after announcing my pregnancy on social media, I posted some stories speaking candidly about my struggles with being pregnant during a pandemic. However the one point I mentioned which I didn’t expect such an overwhelming response to, was mymorning sickness.
In the first few weeks after telling my parents I was pregnant, my mum mentioned she had been joking with my dad, waking up saying ‘Is today the day she calls me vomiting?’ and I felt quite smug as the days passed and I would recount my day exercising and eating whatever I wished. It was about week seven when I made the phone call.
The NHS say about 8 in 10 women suffer some form of morning sickness, however only about 1% are diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum. HG is an extreme form of morning sickness traditionally defined by vomiting up to 10+ times a day, however it is now also considered HG when your nausea is so severe you are unable to eat or take on fluids even if you don’t actually vomit once. I seemed to sit somewhere in the middle.
I expected to feel bad but I truly did not anticipate it to be that bad (I use the past tense because thankfully at week 18 it has mostly passed). It was relentless. I would wake up, unable to move for fear of retching and it would continue until I fell asleep. Even at night, there wasn’t much respite, I would regularly wake up at intervals in the night coughing and gagging. I reached my lowest point when one morning, lying on the bathroom floor (the cold tiles were my favourite place to be for about 3 months solid) I sobbed into my boyfriend’s arms and I said the words I still feel ashamed to have said, “ I don’t want this baby anymore”
I say this without any exaggeration, not being able to eat or drink without gagging or vomiting and being unable to sleep without gagging or vomiting is a type of torture and I was desperate for it to end. I eventually called my doctor and begged for anything to help the sickness and felt embarrassed I wasn’t being sick ‘enough’ to qualify for much more than the advice “Have you thought of ginger biscuits?” The feeling of desperation and being unable to continue with my pregnancy was all too real to me and no amount of ginger biscuits would fix that. I felt like a bad mother for not being able to love and nurture the baby inside me and for not being ‘tough enough’ to manage the pregnancy.
At about 10 weeks I realised I had lost a significant amount of weightand I called my midwife about what to do. We were at the height of the new year covid peak, the news was showing ambulances parked waiting for a space for patients and the last thing I wanted was to put my baby at risk in hospital, or take space from someone who needed it more than I did. The midwife was incredibly kind and understanding (not a single ginger biscuit was mentioned) and we came up with a plan to keep my weight stable and to try and ride out the nausea without needing hospital treatment. At the time it felt quite frightening and it’s surprising how quickly I went from feeling desperation for it all to end to such and intense need to keep my baby protected and nourished. I look back now and laugh at how moments after being sick my boyfriend would appear in the bathroom with a freshly prepared smoothie (liquids was all I could stomach) even though the remnants of the earlier smoothie had just come out of my nose.
I was overwhelmed by the messages on Instagram of other mothers offering support, advice or just sharing similar stories - I particularly found comfort in the humorous accounts of people vomiting on their partners or in their workplace. But what I think I found most comfort in was that I wasn’t alone, because here was a whole group of strangers saying they also felt how I did and somehow that helped me feel a lot less guilt. I stopped feeling so guilty that I wasn’t enjoying the pregnancy and I was just surviving the days because we were all just surviving in our own ways.
We recently found out we are expecting a daughter and perhaps one day, like my mum, I too will dread the phone call where she tells me her morning sickness is too much to handle, but I will also be able to tell her, again just like my mum to me, that she is an absolute joy and every moment with her makes those long days of sickness bearable.
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