My hyperemesis gravidarum was unbearable. Then I found a path through the darkness

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nce upon a time, there was a disease of pregnancy so horrendous no description could fully convey the misery of it.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who, in the throes of this disease, told her husband in desperation, “I don’t know how I can endure another pregnancy like this.”

Once upon a time, there was a woman desperate to have another child, but who couldn’t fathom going through pregnancy another time.

Disease and Desperation

If you haven’t experienced it yourself, there’s  no way you’d ever be able to imagine the depths of misery that women experiencing hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) — severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy — endure. I can try to explain, to paint a picture, but there aren’t really words to adequately describe six to nine months of mind-blowing nausea, endless vomiting, extreme weight loss, starvation, muscle wasting, and severe dehydration.

Imagine your worst experience with nausea (food poisoning, stomach virus, typical first-trimester nausea), multiply it by about 500, and then imagine it continuing relentlessly minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month.

And even if you did that, even if you could somehow envision that, you still wouldn’t know what it’s like. You wouldn’t understand the desperation, the suffering, the extreme aversions to food and to people, the sickening smells that overpower you from every direction — the drain in the shower, the walls, the detergent and the cleaning solutions, the food your family members ate hours ago that somehow emanates from their very pores, the food your neighbor is cooking.

Would you be able to fathom believing you’re actually dying, minute after minute, to imagine feeling that you’re shrinking and shrinking further and further until you’re not sure there’ll be anything left of you at all, let alone a child growing inside?

My husband said that seeing me slowly starve was chilling. Try as I might, I just couldn’t eat. If I did somehow get it down, it came back up soon after. I was desperate for nourishment, but unable to consume it, and experienced the severe weakness that accompanies clinical starvation.

After my first pregnancy, I was able to be convinced that “first pregnancies are hard.” I believed everyone that maybe it had just been a bizarre fluke, or that maybe I’d been a little dramatic. Then baby number two was on the way. When HG hit again, full force, I vowed: Never again will I suffer like this. I’m going to find a way out of the clutches of this monster. Because I want to have a family.