My HG story: Rachel Pearl
In July 2017, my husband and I sat cosied up in bed staring at a pregnancy test with the faintest line imaginable, googling whether this meant we were pregnant as we read post after post saying there’s no such thing as a false positive. We were both beaming with excitement, knowing this was the start of something we had prayed and wished for our whole lives.
At exactly 6 weeks pregnant, I began to become violently sick. I was vomiting over 20 times a day, I couldn’t keep the simplest of foods down - not even water. I was living off antacid chewables and macaroni and cheese. I spent days going between the foot of my toilet, to my bed, and back again. I vividly remember one day where I had vomited nearly 15 times before 10 am, all that was coming up was stomach acid, my whole body was convulsing and I kept telling my husband that it felt as if my body was being poisoned. He called the nurse line and the first question the nurse asked was if this was my first pregnancy. My husband said yes and she told him to get me some ginger biscuits and to try and keep up my fluids and protein - I remember breaking down after he got off the phone. Was I just weak? Is this really what morning sickness feels like? How long was this going to last?
As many people are, I’m a to-do list person, I like to get things done, I’m terrible at relaxing and that made having HG extremely difficult mentally. No matter how desperately I desired to be productive and get on with things, my body physically would not allow me to, I felt like an entirely different person. My family and I were in the middle of launching a business while I was sick and I felt like an absolute failure as day after day I couldn’t uphold my commitments to the business.
I went to two different doctors, nearly crying in their office asking for help. Both told me that it will pass at 12 weeks and to just rest and try and get through it.
My husband and I decided against getting the 12-week scan, I’m not exactly sure why but we just didn’t think it was needed. I had “morning sickness” and according to doctors, as they told us over and over, that was a good sign so we didn’t feel we needed to get a scan.
At 16 weeks pregnant, we went to a routine doctor's visit at the hospital where we would give birth. The doctor asked if we would like to hear the heartbeat, we, of course, said yes!
We sat there with that cold jelly on my stomach as she moved the doppler around. After five minutes of her unable to locate the heartbeat, the mood in the room began to change. She told us not to worry and that because I wasn't that far along, sometimes it’s difficult to find the heartbeat. She wheeled in an old school ultrasound machine and began looking at our baby with that. I could see on her face that something wasn’t right, the room was eerily quiet, although she kept saying not to worry, we knew something was going on.
She told us to go back to the waiting room and she would get us into the room with the modern ultrasound machine. After 10 minutes of waiting, which felt like an hour, we were finally back in the chair with that cold jelly on my stomach again.
‘I am so sorry’ the doctor said, as tears began to roll down her face. I looked at my husband, waiting for him to tell me I was dreaming. This couldn’t be happening, I haven't had any bleeding, I had been, and was still so sick … how could this be?
A few days later I went in for a D&C and we were told that they suspected that I may have had what is called a molar pregnancy, they sent away the tissue for testing and would let me know as soon as they had the results. There are two types of molar pregnancy, complete molar pregnancy and partial molar pregnancy. In a complete molar pregnancy, the placental tissue is abnormal and swollen and appears to form fluid-filled cysts. There's also no formation of fetal tissue. In a partial molar pregnancy, there may be normal placental tissue along with abnormally forming placental tissue. There may also be the formation of a fetus, but the fetus is not able to survive. About a week or two later I got a call from the nurse saying that I did indeed have a partial molar pregnancy and that I would have to have weekly blood tests to make sure my HG hormone was going down as a complication of molar pregnancies is the potential of it turning into cancerous cells.
When we got this news, we began to research all about molar pregnancies only to find out that one of the most common side effects is extreme nausea and vomiting.
In July 2018, we got pregnant with our now 10-month-old daughter Emily. I was hopeful that I wouldn’t be as sick as we had a reason for why I was so sick in the last pregnancy. Unfortunately, that was not the case, at 5 weeks into her pregnancy I started vomiting multiple times a day, shaking, and barely able to stand most days. I lost thousands of dollars in design work because of jobs I couldn’t complete. It sounds strange to say but I feel lucky that it only lasted until around 22 weeks pregnant. My heart shatters when I hear stories of women who have HG their entire pregnancy, they are real-world superwomen and have strength like no other.
Having HG was by far the hardest thing I have ever experienced physically but even more so mentally. It affected every single area of my life - my friendships, my faith, my marriage, my work, my mental health, simply looking at my phone would cause me to vomit. It’s hard for me to admit now but I had days where I almost didn’t want to be alive anymore - what was meant to be a joyful time in my life was the darkest. One of the hardest parts of having HG was trying to tell friends and family just how sick I was. I am not great at expressing how I’m honestly doing, I try to pretend like everything's okay because I don’t want people to think I’m weak or that I’m wallowing in my own self-pity. When someone asked me how I was doing, I would tell them I was okay even though I truly wasn’t okay. When family and friends would come over, I would act like I was fine meanwhile the minute they walked out the door, I would be running to the toilet. Looking back, I wish that I accepted defeat. I wish that I didn’t care what people thought, I wish I didn’t care if they thought I was just being a baby who couldn’t handle a bit of “morning sickness” because the truth is, unless you’ve experienced HG, you will never know what it’s truly like. We feel bad for people who have a stomach bug, we tell them to rest and take it easy but then when someone has been vomiting multiple times a day, unable to keep anything down and dizzy to the point of being unable to stand, we tell them to get on with it, and that they should just be thankful to be pregnant. Having HG is a little like having the worst stomach bug you could imagine although it’s every single day, 24 hours a day, for weeks on end with no end in sight.
The thing that terrifies me most about having more babies is having to battle through HG again. However, next time around, we have a game plan. My husband is going to take time off work to care for our daughter, we’re going to have a cleaner as having a clean house is crucial to my mental health, we’re going to get a home-cooked meal delivery service so that I don’t have to cook dinner, and I’ll be getting in touch with an HG friendly doctor to get put on medication.
Of course, not that any of these things will make having HG any easier, but knowing that I want more than one child, just having a plan gives me something to grasp onto and without it … I truly don’t think I’d be able to do it again.
If you can, I urge you to ask for help. There were multiple times I should have gone to the hospital that I didn’t out of fear that they wouldn’t take me seriously. If you feel your doctor doesn’t understand, reach out to HG Australia and they will get you in contact with an HG friendly doctor. You are not failing if you put your hand up and tell your loved ones you can’t do this alone.
Mumma, if you’re reading this, what you’re going through sucks, it sucks so bad and I would never wish this experience on my worst enemy but you WILL get through this because you are stronger than you know. Sit in front of the tv and watch Netflix, don’t feel bad for how many frozen cokes you drink or how many bags of salt and vinegar chips you consume, learn from the HG mums who have gone before you and do not feel guilty for accomplishing zero in your day. If you don’t get out of your pyjamas and you only move from your bed to the toilet and back again, remember that you are quite literally creating life! Just survive, that’s all you need to do.
For those reading who have a friend, family member, or even a stranger battling HG, for the love of all that’s good in the world do not, I repeat, do not ask them if they’ve tried ginger. I can promise you they have tried every ginger product on planet earth and the only thing it does is burn like hell coming back up!