May 15th Hyperemesis Gravidarum awareness day.

As a lot of people know I suffered with Hyperemesis Gravidarumin two pregnancies, most of you kind of know what it is thanks to the news reports of Kate Middleton suffering with it, but not everyone understands it or even believes that this kind of illness in pregnancy is real. May 15th is hyperemesis gravidarum day, so I wanted to take this opportunity to write a post about that it is and how it effects pregnant women such as myself. What is Hyperemesis-Gravidarum? Hyperemesis Gravidarum is a name given to women who experience excessive vomiting during pregnancy. It usually starts between 4 weeks to 7 weeks and is said to ease off around the 14 week mark. Unfortunately for a lot of women this isn't the case and they suffer with it throughout their whole pregnancy. HG makes it very hard to keep anything down, seriously anything! I couldn't even keep water down and was being sick every 10 minutes, it was exhausting.

Why is it different from normal morning sickness? The answer to this is very simple, with normal morning sickness you don't excessively puke every 10 minutes, nor do you become so dehydrated that you need to be put on an IV for fluids. I found out I was suffering from HG was when I took a trip to the ER after not eating or drinking for days, My ketones were very high and I had a fever, the doctors and nurses had a hard time trying to locate my veins as I was so dehydrated. HG makes it hard to even move from your bed, communicate with others in fact it makes it hard to carry on with everyday life in general. I was very depressed and lonely in the weeks I suffered with it, Crying was pointless because it took so much energy out of me.

I forever had my head in a bowl throwing up, I just use to go into my own little world to try and feel better.

I've had many many times people have tried to tell me to eat ginger biscuits as they will ease the sickness, it's not their fault that they don't know much about HG but I did try to explain that remedies such as ginger biscuits does nothing to help the sickness. It was a very hard process in trying to keep my sickness under control, I would go into hospital be put on fluids and sickness medication and the sickness would ease off, as soon as I got back home the sickness would come back even worse, my pregnancies never progressed passed 12 weeks but that is something I would rather not go into in this blog post, but you can read more about my life after Hyperemesis Gravidarum in a post I did a while ago HERE. If anyone would like some more information on Hyperemesis Gravidarum a foundation called HelpHer is a great place to start, there site is packed full of so much useful and accurate information about this sickness which has helped me a lot, they also have a section for family and friends to help them understand what a woman is really going through when it comes to this awful sickness. So for May 15th I shall be changing my profile pictures to this in the hopes that people will ask about it and to raise awareness:

Please remember it's not us women being over the top, this condition is exhausting and takes a lot out of us, having to battle with your own body and try not to throw up is a huge struggle.

Elle May x