HG Advocate, Sarah, has been running an awareness campaign through her photography business since 2024. As one of our brilliant fundraisers for a month to change minds, she shares how Hyperemesis Gravidarum was the ‘Loneliest experience of her life’.

“I feel slightly apprehensive about sharing my hyperemesis gravidarum story. I am so conscious, especially after speaking to women as part of this project, that my experience was very mild compared to many. However I also recognise that my pregnancy wasn’t a ‘normal pregnancy’ and that it has had a lasting impact on me. It would also be hypocritical to embark on a project sharing hyperemesis gravidarum sufferers stories and not share my own.

After 8 months of trying for a baby I was beyond thrilled to find out I was pregnant I August 2022. I started feeling nauseous at 4+5 weeks and started vomiting at about 5 and a half weeks pregnant. I had unexplained bleeding at 5 and a half weeks and had to have an early scan, in the week waiting for my EPAU scan I didn’t mind the vomiting as I found it reassuring (‘surely if I’m sick everything is fine?’) and it was sort of a novelty. After a possible chemical pregnancy earlier in the year it was reassuring to have symptoms that meant yes, I was definitely pregnant. Thankfully at that scan we were told yes, everything was ok, and repeated reassurances that yes there really was only one in there even if I was very sick (I have family history of twin pregnancies ending in miscarriage so this was a big concern of mine).

However, by this time vomiting had started to take over my life. I was vomiting ten to fifteen times a day if not more.  

I went to work, I came home, that was it. I would wake at 4AM and start vomiting and it would keep going throughout the day, it would usually ease off a little in the afternoon but by the evening it would be back in full force.

I had a brief phone call with a midwife as a first appointment. It lasted five minutes, she asked me if I smoked, my height and my weight. I tried to speak to her about the vomiting but she told me ‘some nausea is normal’, told me they’d see me at the booking appointment and hung up.

A few days before my dating scan I realised I still hadn’t had a booking appointment, I had been trying to power through thinking ‘I just have to make it to the booking appointment, and they can help’. When I spoke to my doctor’s surgery I had been lost in the system and forgotten about. I got booked in for a booking appointment and spoke to my midwife about my sickness, she again reassured me no it was a single pregnancy, that there was medication I could take but it was probably best I waited until after the first trimester

At 14 weeks I spoke to the GP as I was still struggling despite everyone telling me it would get better at 12 weeks or 14 weeks. They gave my cyclizine which did nothing other than make me drowsy.

At my 16-week phone call with my midwife she told me that I already had medication so I should be fine and the vomiting would stop soon. I remember being 17 weeks pregnant, lying on the bathroom floor one day having called in sick, wondering how on Earth I could get through this pregnancy.

I couldn’t even move my head without vomiting. I lay there for four hours. I should have phoned 111 that day as I couldn’t keep any fluid down but I didn’t want to be a nuisance. And besides surely I wasn’t that bad?

Whilst pregnant I entered a very weird headspace where I simultaneously spent everyday googling ‘Is it normal to vomit over 15 times a day when pregnant? ’Is blood in vomit normal? ’Is bile in vomit normal?’

Whilst also refusing to go back to the GP or speak to my manager about having time off sick as I didn’t want to let people down or be a nuisance. I work for the NHS in a busy outpatient department, and I didn’t want the team to suffer.

Meanwhile I was vomiting on the train, on train station platforms, in bins on the walk to work, on myself, on lay-bys, at motorway service stations, in the sink at work, mid eye test at work, in just about every pub in the town I live in as every time I went for a walk I would have to make pit stops to be sick.

It didn’t stop. At 20 weeks I started having blood in my vomit every day. I also started getting incontinence every time I was sick, so I had to take spare scrubs with me to work. At my 24-week appointment I tried to speak to the midwife again, she wrote ‘some sickness persists’ on my notes and told me to keep using the cyclizine.
At my 28-week appointment I didn’t bother mentioning it but at that point I was told I was a nightmare to get blood from and very few pregnant people had veins as bad as mine – had I been drinking enough water? I told them no I hadn’t because I couldn’t keep water down very well. Some nausea is normal, I was told.
At my 32-week obstetrician appointment I told her I was being sick still and there was sometimes blood in my vomit. I was told my oesophagus was probably a bit irritated and some sickness was normal.
At 34 weeks I started getting very itchy hands and feet, several repeat blood tests told me my bile was high, not enough to be a problem but a bit abnormal. At 38 weeks I was told I had gained less weight than average in pregnancy, I said I had been vomiting for almost 9 months. The midwife said at least I didn’t have to worry about losing weight afterwards.  I had a long and difficult labour which is a whole other story.
When I went into labour at 39+4 I couldn’t stop vomiting, from the moment my waters broke until the moment my daughter was born at 40+0 the sickness was relentless. I think over the space of 50 hours I must have vomited well in excess of 40 times.

Because I was in a room on my own a lot of the time no one noticed I couldn’t keep fluid down, once I was on the labour ward my veins kept collapsing and it took 6 attempts to get a cannula in me as I was so dehydrated. I developed early sepsis and was put on antibiotics. My kidney and liver function became abnormal, in a large part due to dehydration, and my blood pressure dropped to 85/55. My baby was in distress, her heartbeat went down to 60 beats per minute whilst mine went to 130 beats per minute.

At 40+0 my daughter was born via emergency c-section. We were discharged from hospital very quickly despite having a traumatic experience and long labour as. I remember the midwives telling my husband ‘Your wife is made of something different to the rest of us’ because I seemed to be coping so well, I think the reality is I was in complete and utter shock.

Antihistamines, if taken up to birth, can sometimes cause drowsiness, irritability and paradoxical tremors in neonates (newborns) though this is rare and there is no evidence of long-lasting effects for mother or baby. As a result, if medications are taken up to birth many mothers and babies are kept in longer for observation. In Sarah’s case, this was not done, and Sarah believes this directly led to disastrous consequences for her and her daughter along with dismissal.

It was only after I gave birth that it all hit me. I had been in a headspace of getting through each day whilst pregnant, trying to think beyond that was impossible. It was only later that it got too much for me. I still think about it every day, I think of all the places I was sick, all the times I was sick, I feel like I lost 9 months of my life. I get upset at other people’s pregnancies, when I see other people who are glowing through pregnancy it makes me feel like a failure and I often mourn what I expected pregnancy to be.”
 
In the end it was around 230 days of consecutive vomiting. I’ve since had compassion focussed therapy via the perinatal mental health team to help me to change my thoughts and feelings about putting other’s needs before my own, about how having a condition like HG doesn’t make me a failure, and to help me realise that prioritising the health of myself and my baby isn’t selfish behaviour.
… After all that time of telling people ‘I might be sick but at least I don’t have hyperemesis’ I finally realised that no, I really had had hyperemesis. It has changed me as a person. I sometimes feel like it broke me to remake me as a stronger, more assertive person. I feel passionately about advocating for pregnant and postnatal women to have a voice and the help and support they need. Pregnancy Sickness Support have been a big help to me postnatally. I have felt a lot of anger about my pregnancy experience, but I feel like if I can direct that anger into something that makes a positive change in people’s lives than that is at least something worthwhile.
Thank you to Sarah for bravely sharing her story and for all her incredible work to help other sufferers of Hyperemesis Gravidarum. You can read more of her story and get involved with her awareness project here.