My HG story: Kathleen Robertson

It was December 2016, I’d recently started a new job and been flat out busy working functions. I was late for my period but that wasn’t out of the ordinary as I suffer from PCOS and my periods where all over the place. A customer asked me at work when was I due I said I wasn’t pregnant and my belly was from the medication I was on.

The next day I was trying to figure out when my last period was and I couldn’t remember. I went to the toilet and took a pregnancy test. I saw 2 lines appear and I started crying. My fiancé and I had been trying to fall pregnant for some time.

Within a week I started getting really sick. I couldn’t handle fluids or food, certain foods made the vomiting worse. I thought it was normal morning sickness. One day I felt so bad I went to the emergency department and they hooked me up to IV and explained I had hyperemesis. I never heard of it before. At that time I was ten weeks pregnant and I had lost 20kgs. I had multiple hospital admissions for IV fluids.

I had Hospital at Home come out but they couldn’t get another cannula into me as my veins were so dry. They sent me to the hospital. The hospital managed to get one in and gave me a bag of IV fluids. After that they discharged me. I was still vomiting and barely could walk. That night I was at home and was laying on the floor with a bucket crying that I couldn’t do this anymore. 

My fiancé took me to the closest ED but on the way, I was struggling to stay conscious and he kept yelling at me to stay awake. We got to the hospital and he carried me in they took me straight away and hooked me up to IV fluids. They ran blood tests. They sent me up to a ward. The blood tests showed I had dangerously low magnesium and potassium so with IV fluids I had infusions of magnesium and 5 bags of potassium. 

I cried I didn’t want to go through this anymore. Not only was I worried about my health I was worried about my unborn child. I asked to speak to an OB about terminating the pregnancy but the OB never came to see me. 

The next morning the ward doctors came up and told me they were going to put a PICC line in to make it easier for IV fluids and the potassium infusions. Later that day I went to radiology where they placed the PICC line in.

The nurses didn’t understand hyperemesis and pretty much said I was bulimic to my partner because every time I tried to eat they just saw it coming back up.

When I was in my second trimester the HG settled down a tiny bit with the right cocktail of antiemetics so I only had few hospital admissions. The third trimester hit and I was having IV fluids at least once a week... when I was 37 weeks I had a seizure ( I also have epilepsy) so I had my c-section brought forward as bubs heart rate was off. On the 18 of July 2017, my baby boy was born healthy. At the end of pregnancy, I lost a total of 28 kgs.