The Hypermesis Post, in honor of Call the Midwife

Did you watch Call the Midwife this weekend with the woman with hyperemesis? Caution, then, because the episode, and this post, has to do with symptoms of severe morning sickness. Proceed at your own risk. There will probably be details that are definitely considered TMI. 

I could totally relate to the parts where the woman in the episode was too sick to even make food for her child, where she couldn’t even see a cup of tea (even though I only drink herb tea), and the part where they asked, “How many times a day do you vomit?” and she said, “Twenty or thirty.”

Wow. Been there. And I realized that I wrote a blog post about hyperemesis but I never posted it.

So in honor of Call the Midwife, Season Four, here’s my hyperemesis post: 

I have been pregnant five times: three boy pregnancies and two girl pregnancies (one of which sadly ended on its own at week 18, plenty long enough for me to be morning sick).  

With my boys, I didn't feel great, but I could function. I was tired and queasy but life went on. Constant nausea, occasional emesis, then my energy was back by week 22.

With my first boy pregnancy, I still worked full-time feeling this way. With my boy second pregnancy,  I appreciated it when a friend brought me a meal once and I chased around after boy #1. With my third boy pregnancy, I hired a babysitter to come so I could take a nap a few times a week. I could feed my kids, I could get dressed and be out in public, I could go on vacation. Definitely do-able.

I think if this were the only type of morning sickness I’d ever experienced, I wouldn’t understand what those “other” women were talking about. The ones who say that morning sickness makes it so they can’t function and need help. If it were a judgmental day, I might even think they were over-reacting and being melodramatic. I would think they should just get moving, snack, stop whining, and they’d feel better.

But I have experienced something else. I have experienced hyperemesis with my two girl pregnancies, and it’s totally different. With my girl pregnancies, I throw up all day and all night. Every morning, I stop counting how many times I’ve thrown up when I get to five, and that’s usually before 10 AM. Here are the things that trigger emesis: smelling or seeing food, helping a child in the bathroom, getting out of bed, drinking water, moving. I needed medication just to keep water down.

I lived like this for weeks and then months, every day, all day and all night. Women with hyperemesis don’t just throw up food, but also bile. After bile comes blood. The throwing up isn’t the worst part; it’s the total body fatigue and dehydration that come after vomiting so many times that makes it impossible to just get up and get moving.  Hypermesis doesn’t come and go. There are no good days and bad days; there are only bad days. It lasts and lasts.

In hindsight, I really needed IV fluids and more medical treatment during both girl pregnancies, but I’d been lifelong conditioned that real women just suffer it out.

Well let me tell you.

Real women need help.

Because hyperemesis isn’t about mental fortitude. It’s not about wanting to be pampered. It’s not about making it up. But it is, quite literally, the inability to take care of children, the house, and even the woman’s own self. Hypermesis is not “normal” morning sickness. It’s not feeling yucky. It’s not throwing up once or twice a day and being tired and crabby. I had three pregnancies like that. But hyperemesis is not that.

I don’t like to ask for help and there are few people I feel comfortable asking help from. But I had to get over it and expand my circle of helpers, just so my family could go on.

Here are some lovely things people did to help me during my last hyperemesis pregnancy, two pregnancies ago: 

1. I hired a great babysitter to come in just about every day. Her job was to take over while I was incapacitated. She did. She'd stay for about four hours a day, and when she left, panic would set in. Truly, I could not have managed without her.

2. There is a lovely woman in my church congregation who came to my rescue at the hardest times. Her home is a safe, nurturing place and my kids love to be there. Once she brought them back to my house, carrying bags of homemade playdough and chocolate chip cookies. She said it was a pleasure to have them. I love that woman.

3.     Women brought our family meals. Mind you, I couldn’t eat them. I couldn’t even stand the SMELL of them, but my family still needed to eat. The meals would come, I would shut myself in my room (away from the smell), and my kids could eat a meal instead of having cereal for the second or third time in a row.  These loving women would bring the meal in, feed my kids, and clean it all up. These were especially helpful since Eric’s church work necessitates that he’s out of the house often until late in the evening. 

4.     Eric was the real champion. When he was home, he took over all the things necessary to care for the kids and the house. Those were the easy things he had to do for me. I will spare you the details of the hard things.

5.     One weekend Eric had to go out of town for business while I had hypermesis. A compassionate adopted “auntie” of my kids came to spend the night and watch over the kids/me. She took care of the kids and put them to bed while I was throwing up blood in the other room.  I truly thought I'd might spend the rest of the weekend in the hospital, and I was so comforted that there was someone to take care of my kids. 

Here’s how to help if you know someone that’s going through hyperemesis. Or even just severe morning sickness:

1. If she has kids, you can help with her kids. In her house or in yours. Just return them to her in a non-hyper state---even if you have let her rest, she still won’t have energy when you bring the kids back. She’ll still be exhausted. 

2.      You can feed her family. You can clean up after the meal because she won’t be able to do it. You can take out the garbage on your way out. 

3.     You can take her to the doctor because she’s too weak to drive herself and she’s not safe on the road. Bless the woman (see above list #2) who made herself available to drive me to my appointments when I had to see the doctor every Friday. Bless this woman doubly because these were the appointments where I found out every week if the baby I knew would pass away was still OK or not. Bless that woman for taking me and waiting with me when I was too sick to get myself there and home. Bless her. Bless her. 

4.      You can sit in her house for as long as she’ll let you so that you can be the one to get her kids a drink of water, help them in the bathroom, make sure they are fed . . . because what that woman really needs to do is lie still and not move.

5.     You can have a compassionate heart and not judge her---maybe it’s not as bad as she says, but maybe it is. Maybe she isn’t telling you everything. Look underneath her eyes. If you see little red dots all over, that’s from the blood vessels popping when she’s thrown up again and again. And again. 

6.     You can realize that the help she needs isn’t for an hour. She needs help 24 hours a day for weeks. Stick it out and be there for the long haul. One of my good friends did this for me during my last girl pregnancy. The list of what she did for me starts with, “Once she let me fall asleep on her bed while my kids played in the other room” and ends with “Then she fed my family every Sunday night for three months.” What a woman.

7.     Even if you can’t be at her side, try to understand her plight. Even if your morning sickness was something you could muscle through, hers may not be. This goes beyond soda crackers and will. 

8.     You can resist the urge to tell her that you had it rough and she just needs to get up and get going. That’s normal morning sickness. Hypermesis is something else.

I didn’t have hyperemesis this last pregnancy. I could manage through the normal morning sickness that isn’t fun. I didn’t need to ask for help and so I didn't.  But I remember the girl pregnancies oh so well. 

So if it's you who has hypermesis, ask for help. Ask until you find someone who will help you.  Hire someone to help you if you can. Ask your doctor for whatever medical treatment you need to get through. Lean on your husband. Let someone else take care of you, you really can’t take care of yourself.  It won't last forever, so just for now, find help.