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.
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.
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.