Hi everyone,
My name is Deborah, and I'm 37. I have one 21 month old son.
I met my husband when I was 33, and we were married 6 months later, when I was 34. Five months after that, I was pregnant. I don't know whether I had HG clinically - or rather, I think I did have it, but a 'mild' form - mild, in that I did not require hospitalization or an IV and didn't lose weight. I was probably malnourished in that I couldn't eat anything healthy; I don't think I had any protein because it made me feel too sick, but I must have managed to digest some food, because I didn't lose weight. But from the moment I hit week 5.5 until about week 24, I felt severely nauseated constantly, and threw up three to four times a day. I have never felt so physically miserable in my life. I remember going to have the first scan, when I was six weeks, and almost, almost hoping that there would be nothing there, no heartbeat, because I couldn't imagine being able to survive another day of the way I was feeling, let alone weeks or months. And similarly, although the opposite direction, when I had an alarm at 11 weeks because I bled slightly, I was terrified that I would have gone through all that hell for nothing. Thank God everything was fine - in fact, the pregnancy itself was 'fine' - no complications, no real issues, a good labour and delivery... except for the fact that for 4 months or more I felt so sick that I wished I was dead. I would do labour again any day. I don't mind pain, I can cope with pain. I actually felt very empowered by the labour and delivery. And the pain afterwards, and the hemorrhoids.. all manageable. But going through that sickness again, that constant, constant agony of sickness... I dread it so much. I had to stop working in the office and work from home, and just lay in bed with the laptop, doing all I could manage, which wasn't much (I'm a book editor). For months, all I saw was the bedroom and the bathroom. I forgot where things were in the kitchen; the lounge looked foreign to me. I would totter out sometimes to be with my husband, and lie on the couch while he ate, and then after a few minutes just have to give up and go back to bed. When I threw up for the third or fourth time that day, I would be in tears; why couldn't it just stop for a few minutes? Why coudln't I at least feel relief after throwing up? The only time I ever didn't feel sick was when I was asleep. In fact, I remember waking up at one point in the middle of the night and I still felt sick, and I started to cry, because the deep of the night was the only time I felt ok, and even that had been taken away from me. I tried everything everyone suggested; the ginger, the crackers, the bracelets, the preggopop sweets, and even some of the drugs - nothing helped.
I don't want my son to be an only child. For months and months after his birth I swore I could never do it again. We use a diaphragm and spermicide, because the pill made me too sick, and of course that is not quite as much of a guarantee against pregnancy as some other things, so I was always hyper alert and worried that I might be pregnant. But now the time is coming when I have to force myself to go through this again. I know I can't do it a third time. But I don't want my son to be an only child, and I feel I have to do it. I think the memory has faded enough now that I'm persuading myself into this. I know I survived last time. But everyone keeps saying "next time might be totally different" and I Know that, but it might be even worse! And once you're in it, that's it, you're trapped. Nine months has never felt so long. Abortion is not an option. And I'm so scared. This time I have an active, demanding, beautiful son to look after, it's not just us. Last time my husband did everything; he cooked, he cleaned, he shopped, he bought me the food I could bear to eat. This time I will have to do more.
I never really asked the doctor to help all that much. I tried a couple of the milder drugs - during the height of the nausea they didn't make the slightest difference. I don't remember the name of one of them. I started taking unisom (an anti-histamine) when the nausea had already got milder (throwing up once a day instead of four times), and I think eventually it started helping, because I took it for the rest of the pregnancy - and any day I didn't take it, I threw up again. So if i hadn't had that, i think i would have been sick the entire 9 months.
I think because I didn't lose weight and didn't get dehydrated etc, there wasn't really much help for me. I've heard that they now have started giving drugs to hyperemetic women that they give chemo patients - but I doubt they would agree to that kind of thing for me if I'm not *that* ill. And I woudln't want to take anything that might risk the baby's health. But the unremitting, unrelenting misery of constant 24 hour nausea and vomiting... I'm just so scared of going through it again. I hope that this time I will be able to look at my son and see the result of my first pregnancy and know that it is all worth it, but I also resent the fact that I have to go through this at all. My mother wasn't like this, and neither was one of my sisters. The other sister had it relatively bad, too. My mother in law 'floated through her pregnancies'. My sisters in law either never felt sick or felt mildly nauseous for 5 or 6 weeks. My friends - I don't have any that felt the way I did.
My ambivalance about the possible future pregnancy is also exacerbated by a separate issue. I have struggled with weight my entire life, until I was 28, when I discovered the answer for me, which was low-carbing. Over 3 years, I lost nearly 100 pounds. I maintained that loss for 5 years. So for 8 years I was eating healthily, I was in control, and I gradually lost weight until I finally felt 'normal' for the first time in my life. Like I was finally in my real body, not the one that was somehow inflicted on me. Losing that weight, and being in control is one of the things that defines me more than anything else. When I was pregnant, I was so sick that all I could eat was carbs. Even those I threw up most of the time, but once the sickness reduced so that I still felt nauseous but only threw up about once a day, I started putting on weight. I only gained 26 pounds during the pregnancy, because once I finally got past the nausea, at 5 months, I was able to eat well again, but after my son was born (weighing 6 pounds), I never lost an ounce of that pregnancy weight. I even put on a few more pounds because I thought I might need carbs to make enough milk. And nearly 2 years later, despite all my efforts, I am still the same weight I was (185lbs). So I am terrified that in a second pregnancy I will put on *another* 25 pounds that I won't be able to get rid of. I wanted to lose the weight before I had another baby, but it hasn't happened. And I'm 37, and my son is nearly 2, and for his sake and for mine, I can't wait much longer.
I feel like by trying to become pregnant again, I am in effect, committing a form of suicide, for a child I do not yet know. And I'm scared that it won't just be the months and months of illness and misery, but there will be permanent misery afterwards because I will end up heavier again, with no ability to lose the weight. I know it shouldn't affect me as badly as it does, but I can't seem to help it. I feel wrong, I feel not myself, I feel like a failure. I know everything there is to know about nutrition, I am *not* asking for diet advice here, I am just expressing my fear and frustration. I watch my friends and my relatives have babies with relative ease, with not much sickness, and look exactly like they always did, while I feel like I have already lost part of myself and am in danger of losing more... and to get to that place I also have to endure months of harrowing sickness.
I feel like I lost most of my friends when I was pregnant because I just had no strength to be in touch with anyone. I think a lot of them thought I was just being 'newlywed' obsessed with my husband and didn't have time for them. No one understands just how sick I was. I've spent time building bridges and reconnecting, which is good, but we are moving to a new area in a month, and I feel like I'm just going to go through that hell all over again and not have the opportunity to make friends etc.
Anyway, I am happy to have found a place to vent, where people understand. I get very annoyed with people who say "next time might be better" - sure it might, but how can I plan for that? Psychologically, I have to prepare myself to enter hell again, because that's what it's likely to be.
Thank you all for listening.
Deborah
All i can do is thank god i never will go through this hell again. Zofran has helped me so much!!! I cant believe my dr's let me suffer and almost die all 7 other times! They will give you a prescription. It wont hurt the baby. Its worth a try. Dont suffer without it. I wish i had been more harsh with my dr's. They never listened to me. Nor did they care....
