Reflecting on an HG pregnancy

After the loneliest 9 months of my life suffering with Hyperemesis Gravidarum for the second time, I wanted to write it all down in the hope that it might bring some comfort to anyone who needs it.

As I sit down to write this I am 16 days postpartum, and already the memories of my HG pregnancy are starting to fade. And truthfully I want nothing more than to let them. As I feel myself coming back to life, as the novelty of being able to breathe through my nose again without gagging and not starting every day with a tonic of antiemetic wears off, I barely want to think about what I’ve just been through, let alone talk about it. Not least of all because whenever I try to, I cry. I have just come through something incredibly traumatic, and with the perspective afforded me even just in the two weeks since it ended, I can see quite how far that trauma seeped. When you’re the one hooked up to an IV, who’s vomiting so aggressively they wet themselves, who’s losing weight and needing infusions, it’s only natural that your struggle is the thing that is acknowledged. But that struggle did not exist in isolation. My husband, who I have seen cry only a handful of times throughout the decade that we have been together, wept when our second daughter was born in a way I’ve never seen before, with gratitude, with sadness, with happiness, and overwhelmingly, I think, with relief. Relief that it’s over, relief that we did it. He lost his wife for a while there, and whilst caring for her shell, easing her sadness, and missing her warmth, he had to keep it all going; work, and friends and family, a house move, a dog, and critically, tirelessly, parenting, which he had to do largely alone. Our daughter Arlo was just 14 months when my HG started, and she too has been through this with us. Our whole world, and my whole heart, who lay with me in bed when I couldn’t get up, who’s little eyes widened with fear as she watched me be sick, who’s first attempt at a sentence was “pills, sick, mummy, better”, who’s staggering kindness, patience and empathy bloomed every day, exploding out of her in the purest of ways, who I missed, so much and so much of, who took it all in her tiny stride, I owe it to her, and to him, and to me, to acknowledge what this was and what WE went through.

And so as much as I want to close the lid on the box and put it well away and begin to heal from what was undoubtedly the most traumatic year of our lives, I feel a huge sense of responsibility, to those currently in the depths of HG to write this all down, to immortalise it and let it exist in perpetuity. I was so fucking lonely with HG. In a way I cannot explain, in a way that to write down feels as tragic as it does troubling. I was as low as I have ever been, as I could ever imagine being. And I was so desperate for connection; to know that this wasn’t just me, that I wasn’t failing, that I wasn’t doing something wrong, and that it really was as bad as it felt, that I wasn’t on my own. I was frantic in my solitude, and although I’ve subsequently found a beautifully supportive community, I didn’t know about them when I first needed them. So, I wanted to write this, in the hope that anyone who needs it, finds it. I didn’t want to sell it to a newspaper to have an editor try to make it make sense to a public who don’t know of HG as anything other than “that thing Kate Middleton had”, or to try to slash the word count down in order that I could upload it as an Instagram post. It’ll be way too long to hold the interest of most of you, and quite honestly, fair fucks. If it’s curiosity that’s brought you here, I harbour no ill will if you find it too depressing an essay and check out early. With all the love in the world, it’s not really for you anyway. This is for the women that need it, and their partners. Whether you’re going through it now, or reading this, as I may well be, a few years after its first published, on the precipice of deciding whether or not this is something I might be able to endure again.

Without the guidance of an editor, I’ve been trying to work out how best to start this. Do I take you back to the beginning and tell you the story of my HG as it happened? Or can I start it at the end; telling you about the last two weeks, and how, after moving house in August, I used my oven for the very first time? Or about how I drank a cup of coffee a just after I gave birth and found myself laughing at how ludicrous it was that a caffeine fiend like myself lived 9 months physically unable to even think about something that in her normal life is as integral as oxygen? Or perhaps it’d be most pertinent to try and delve into the huge breadth of emotions that swirl around me when I hold the baby that I can’t quite believe is here. Despite the fact this pregnancy completely took over my life and became the cornerstone of my identity, in the weirdest way, now that Xanthe is here there’s a degree to which I am surprised, because for nine months I haven’t felt as if I was pregnant at all, I’ve just felt as if I’ve been really, really sick.

I didn’t get to glow, and I wasn’t well enough to rebuild the newborn attachment for the buggy or prepare her room, I barely even had the strength to pack a hospital bag. I couldn’t bury my face into the delicious scent of freshy laundered baby grows because the smell would make me gag. My hospital appointments were frequent and frightening and my notes made for such depressing reading I can’t even bring myself to read them. I didn’t get to wear my baby on board badge since public transport felt impossible; the risk of being sick or collapsing was too high, and I basically spent as much as I was earning by driving into central London for work. Rather than watch my body grow and bloom, for the first half of the pregnancy I’d get on the scale every morning to see that I was losing weight and every day I was forced to forgo the opportunity to do right my baby when it came to giving her a healthy environment in which to grow; I shit you not, I was unable to drink a glass of water for the entire nine months. My hydration came first via intravenous fluids and then in the form of coca cola, ice cold orange squash and grapes (all of which would come straight back up on a bad day). I don’t exaggerate when I say I can count on one hand the times I was able to eat a vegetable and as a result my (frequent) blood tests showed that my body was malnourished. So much so that the latter end of my pregnancy saw me needing iron infusions. I survived entirely on Vanilla Huel Shakes (which I actually credit with preventing me from getting a lot sicker than I did, as they are packed with nutrients), giant pretzels, ritz crackers and plain pasta. And all the while, the person who I know myself to be, became completely dormant. In fact, and trust me when I tell you that I absolutely hear how hyperbolic this must sound, in lots of ways, I feel like she died.

I ran London Marathon the day before I found out I was pregnant. In fact, it was the breathlessness that crept in at mile 18 that I couldn’t shake even after I’d finished the run and got home that made me first suspect I was. My first daughter was 14 months old and training for it had been a huge part of my healing and recovery from my first pregnancy, in which I also had HG. Running is a huge part of my life, being outdoors and feeling strong, sweat and endorphins, they’re just magic to me. So too is good food, and good nutrition, and cooking, for myself, for my daughter and husband and friends, I love it. And all of that comes from the fact that under normal circumstances, I am overflowing with energy. I know you’re not supposed to describe yourself in such affable terms, because in doing so you run the risk of sounding immodest, but it’s true, I am a happy person, I am grateful for my life and excited by it every day; I get up early and I love the noise and chaos, I want to do lots, all the time, and so I do, or did, anyway. I derive all my energy from other people, I’m a total sponge for it all and I’m obsessed with the notion of a full life. But within hours of my HG starting, these parts of my life, these parts of me, they started to shrink. And they continued to do so at such a rate that now, nine months later, there are huge parts of the life I lived, the person I was, that I don’t recognise, and can’t remember. Like a plant deprived of sunlight, I felt myself physically wilting under the pressure of it all; my friendships suffered, my marriage, my work, and devastatingly, my ability to be a good parent, the thing that I am most proud of, that is most important to me.

My best friend got married last year and the guilt that I felt at being unable to be life and soul of it all, of needing to go to bed early, of being a depressing little ritz cracker fanatic in the corner of the room, was horrible. I missed dinners and turned down invitations, I didn’t reply to messages or call them enough, I never went to their houses and when they came to mine I had to go to bed shortly after they got here. I wasn’t there for them in the ways they might have needed because I couldn’t be. I was a shit wife to my husband, too. And whenever I say that people tell me that I wasn’t, that it wasn’t my fault, that I was doing my best, and whilst that’s all true, it doesn’t detract from the fact that our 50-50 relationship cascaded into a 10-90 overnight. And yes, I know I was making his child and he would tell you that it was all worth it, and that he’d have done it all and more, and taken my suffering away in an instant if he could, that doesn’t change the facts; he had to carry everything. And that was exhausting, and lonely, and made harder by the fact that I was carrying my own guilt, and was therefore defensive and shitty and depressed and depressing. I was a little blackhole of emotion and my situation gave no space for his feelings at all, I knew it at the time, I know it now, and I hate myself for it. He assures me he still loves me, and he’s a saint for that quite honestly. But that all pails into insignificance at the shame I feel at how my parenting suffered, that is another beast entirely.

And that has, without a shadow of a doubt, been the hardest part of this whole process. The excruciating guilt that has come with not being able to be there for my first daughter whilst making my second has broken me completely. I have had some of my darkest thoughts; thoughts darker than I knew I was capable of having. Lying in bed day after day, unable even to smell my daughter’s breath or hair without being sick, unable to lift her, or leave the house with her, unable even to explain it to her, I listened to her life carrying on without me; to her dad making it fun, to my friends loving her, I saw pictures from the park and heard stories from the soft plays and I’d sob at the fact that she didn’t need me, that no one needed me. And SHIT I know that’s toxic, and yes I’ll deal with it in therapy at some point, but I want you to hear it as it was, there were days when I thought it might actually be easier for all of them if I wasn’t there anymore. And those are about as bad a thoughts as I could have imagined having during what was supposed to be the happiest time of my life.

But that’s depression, and that’s what I think I had. Circumstantial depression, depression caused by trauma, but depression, nonetheless. Both my pregnancies were shrouded in darkness; and that’s a horrible sentence too. Because it’s the greatest privilege of my life, getting to make my girls, and I am all too aware of the astounding blessing my ability to even carry them is. To complain about it, to resent it, even for a moment, it’s a shitty thing to do, both privately and publicly. And as a result, whether because you’ve said it out loud or even thought it to yourself, the guilt and shame that comes with your admission is staggering. Made harder by the fact that so much of pregnancy and postpartum is shrouded in silence, with our society dictating that we endure what we do silently at first, and then gratefully. No matter the trauma, they’ll tell you that you’re lucky, that at least your baby is okay, that you should be thankful. And you are, and you should, but fuck me that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Two things can be true, in fact, more often than not they are. Making my babies has been the absolute making of me. Making my babies also dragged me to the depths of myself.

I started seeing an antenatal trauma therapist by the time I was about seven months pregnant. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge HG as a trauma before that, and I felt fraudulent in lots of ways, seeking out the support of someone who surely dealt with people going through much worse than me, but I wasn’t okay, and that’s about as plainly as I can say it. I could see it, the people around me could see it, and I needed to do something about it. Most times after I threw up I found myself sobbing; it had become a physical response I couldn’t control. And every day would follow the same pattern; I’d wake with the briefest of hopes that I might be okay that day, and I’d realise within a matter of minutes that I wouldn’t, and that would bring with it a wave of disappointment that was both subliminal and pervasive. Throughout the day I would push myself, into work or parenting or friendships or whatever it was that required me to devote as much of myself as I had available to it, until at some point I would inevitably break and that would bring with it a second wave of despair. By then I’d feel nothing but anger. Anger at myself, in such a visceral way my insides felt like poison, I longed to scream, but I live in central London and was usually in the presence of a toddler, so I’d hold it all in until I was physically shaking. By the time I went to bed, normally at the same time as my one year old, often next to her, since co-sleeping was the only way I felt able to spend any real time or protect my connection with her, I’d feel the deepest sense of sadness, of failure and shame and despair. I’d fall asleep, only for the cycle to repeat again the next day. So I went to therapy, and it helped. But truthfully, when my ferritin levels plummeted and I found myself back in and out of hospital for the iron infusions, I stopped going. I didn’t have the time, nor the energy, ironically.

I am going to go back though, because unlike with my first pregnancy, I don’t think I’m going to be able to run away from the trauma of this one. One way or another, I need to heal. Not least of all, because despite it all, I want to do this again. I would like to have another baby, and whilst that speaks volumes to the calibre of my children, it’s also a testament to the power of humanity’s evolutionary mechanisms, that women are so quickly able to forget the raw pain and trauma of pregnancy and childbirth in just one beautifully intense, oxytocin filled moment. Because already I am forgetting HG. In fact, as soon as the placenta was removed, the sickness stopped, and the memories began to fade. By the time I came to be discharged the day after my daughter was born, I told the consultant that I had already forgotten how bad the pregnancy was. He told me he hadn’t. We have always had dreams of a big family, we still do, but this pregnancy has changed the way we dream of our future; romanticised notions of the beautiful chaos of a growing young family are replaced with the shattering reality of the fact that to do this again, I will need to give up myself, and thus my husband’s wife and my daughters’ mum, for another little while.

I feel deeply uncomfortable sharing this part, because the sadness of it all weighs heavy on me, and a decade on the internet has taught me that generally it’s sensible to share your scars not your wounds. But I think it will be a long time before this particular wound does scar, and I know it’s one that many of you carry too. I can’t omit this part of my story because it’s perhaps the biggest component. HG is somehow simultaneously both the most selfish and selfless thing I can imagine doing, and I have no idea whether or not my worries that it would be the former might deter me from dedicating myself to the latter. It’s a thought never far from my mind, something that my husband and I speak about at length, and a conversation that I have had with my consultant multiple times too. We’ve talked about the research going on and the trials that I might be able to involve myself in, about preventative measures I could try, about waiting a few years, really dedicating myself to getting as strong and healthy as I can, ensuring that next time my lifestyle will allow for me to be as sick as I need to be; ensuring that my children are in school or at least with proper childcare and I need to be able to not work at the rate I did this time. I am grateful for his practical suggestions; it makes me feel like one day, I will be ready and this will be possible. Because I do live with the hope that I will be able to do it again, and a big part of my sharing this all now is a gift to my future self, if I am. I want to have this to look back on, I want to remember how good it all gets, how worth it it all is, how I will be okay.

Xanthe’s name means “golden” in Greek, and she’s called that because I knew, from my first pregnancy with Arlo, that when a baby is born after an HG pregnancy, they bring the sunshine with them. And that is exactly what she did. It’s been 16 days and already I have colour in my cheeks and life in my eyes and hope in my heart. I am excited again. I am happy again. I am me again. I woke up this morning after a torturous night of playing musical beds with my toddler and my newborn, and I don’t think I slept for more than an hour at time and it should’ve been awful, and I was probably supposed to have woken up this morning sobbing. As it was I started the day with a cup of coffee which was so fucking delicious that it rubbed all the bad away in an instant, and then I sunk a litre of water which was also entirely divine in its mundanity, and I put moisturiser on and I allowed myself to smell it as I did and it didn’t make me gag and that was an absolute treat. And then I got dressed and I went outside, not because I had to but because I really, really wanted to, and the sun was shining and I felt it on my skin and that was tantalising. And then I marched up the hill behind my house with an energy I’ve been longing for, and on the way home I bought some MANGO, which, with all its slimey flavour feels about as exciting an idea as it was possible to have. Tomorrow morning I’m going to take my eldest daughter to ballet, and I’ll be able to share a croissant with her and jump up and down with her when Hop Little Bunnies comes on. And on Sunday we are going to go for a roast dinner, and I’m going to eat it, and that’s a thought that makes me a bit delirious. An impossible perspective to have when you’re in the depths of it, but the appreciation it gives you for your life and your health when you come through it is a gift and a blessing I’d be remiss not to acknowledge.

Even the darkest nights will end, and the sun will rise again. And that is a promise. I know you’re in hell. And I know it feels as if it’ll never end. I know you feel as if you’re doing it wrong, that if you could just try a little bit harder you’d be like everyone else, doing pregnancy yoga classes and eating satsumas and drinking little lattes with the friends they made at antenatal classes and taking folic acid pills. I know you feel ungrateful, and I know you hate yourself for that. I know that getting through today feels impossible, and the idea of doing it all again tomorrow brings with it a surge of dread. I know you don’t think you can do this, but you can, and you will. I know that there are times when the feelings of overwhelm are so intense at the thought of your future you wonder how on earth you’re going to look after a new baby when you feel like this, but you won’t feel like this then, and you have to trust me on that because I know you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be well. I know you can’t imagine it, can’t envisage it, and I know that makes the idea of this new life terrible. All you’ve known of this baby is how you have felt making them, but that is not your story and that won’t be your future. I know it feels like it can’t possibly be worth it, but it is. And then some. I know you’re lonely, but I’m here. We all are. And we see you, and we’ve got you, and we love you. Hold on, better days are coming.

Pregnancy Sickness Support are a fantastic UK based charity who are available to support you if you need them. I have a highlight saved on my Instagram page called HG if you’re looking for more content to help you feel less lonely xxx

*NB* if you are a journalist reading this who finds themselves tempted to turn this vulnerability into some sort of clickbaity article that totally minimises the huge complexity of antenatal mental health then please, I am literally begging you not to do that. We can work together to do something meaningful if you really care about HG awareness, but any shit you write paraphrasing words from this essay will do more harm than good and quite honestly that’ll break my heart a bit, so please don’t do it.