21.5 Weeks

So… I am taking some time to vent a little bit.

This is my first pregnancy. It was planned. My husband, Michael, and I were absolutely THRILLED to be expecting. We decided we wanted to have a baby and that we were in a good emotional, physical, and financial position to raise a child. We were surprised when we found out that we had indeed conceived the first month we tried! I didn’t completely believe the first pregnancy test and ended up taking 3 more before my first appointment. We found out at about 11:30 pm about 4 days before my missed period, and we immediately got in the car and drove to my parents’ house and his parents’ house and told everyone. We even stopped at the store and bought a cookie cake and some frosting, and wrote, “We’re expecting!” on the cake. It was a great night and we were so happy we were beside ourselves.

I am really, really bad at keeping secrets, and we have generally had very healthy pregnancies in my family, so I wasn’t worried about miscarriage, and we wanted to tell everyone right away. So I went to work and excitedly told my co-workers and my boss and friends and just about anyone who seemed halfway interested in my life.

By the time I hit around 5-6 weeks, I hadn’t experienced any morning sickness and I was feeling like maybe I wouldn’t have any sickness at all. My mom was sick, but she just had a constant feeling of nausea for the first 4 months; she never actually threw up. So around 7 weeks, when I experienced a little nausea, I was disappointed and thought, “Darn! I’m going to be sick!” My co-workers encouraged me to eat some crackers, and it really wasn’t bad so I was reluctant to get anything to eat, but I did anyway. I can’t remember if it went away that day or not. It seems trivial now, having nausea that mild.

By 8 weeks, something just happened. I was sick ALL THE TIME. Morning, noon, and night. It was frustrating trying to figure out if I should go to work. I was selling furniture on commission, and if you got to work sick and can’t sell anything, you don’t make any money and you also don’t make your quota. If you don’t make your quotas and your productivity is low, you’re out. I was pretty new to the furniture business anyway, and I didn’t want to jeopardize my job, but I usually went to work anyway. After all, I wasn’t throwing up.

Well, one day on the way to work, very sick as usual, I got really sick driving and pulled into a parking lot. We had a baby shower gift we had not yet given someone and seeing as the gift bag was the only bag in the car, I quickly threw out the baby clothes and vomited. The bag leaked and it got all over my work pants. I walked inside, threw out the bag, and told my boss I needed to go home. Well, that was Day One of the really bad stuff.

So, here I am at almost 6 months pregnant. The morning sickness hasn’t gone away. I have been in the emergency room more than once. I go days without being able to keep anything down except the occasional glass of water and bowl of Rice Krispies. I throw up saltines, toast, ginger tea, and all that other stuff that people tell me to eat. The sickness has gotten better, but I still throw up about once a day. Usually right when I get up in the morning, I throw up. I have a day or two each week where I can’t eat anything and have to stay off my feet all day. Housework and dishes get abandoned; I can’t prepare food; I can’t even walk my dog or feed Rosie her dog food because the smell sickens me.

During my first trip to the emergency room, I was diagnosed with hyperemesis. That is a fancy way of saying, really severe morning sickness. You lose weight, get dehydrated, get dizzy, all kinds of fun stuff. It takes a huge toll on you emotionally, to feel like you have a terrible stomach bug for months and months on end. The day we found out we were having a girl, I threw up that morning 3 times, and I had only been up for about an hour and I hadn’t been able to even keep water down. Anytime I can’t sleep in and I have to wake up to an alarm clock, I get sicker. Something about having to hurry to get ready, I guess. If I sleep in, I am usually better, but not always.

Besides affecting me physically and emotionally, it has affected us financially. I hung on and kept working for the first 3 months. I then took a month of medical leave. No medication my doctor prescribed worked, and I was calling in constantly, for a few days or even a week at a time. I went on medical leave and returned a month later. I lasted 2 or 3 weeks, I think, and that third week, I was absent most of the time and I went back to the emergency room for dizziness. I called my doctor that day and one of her many lovely assistants called me back and told me that it probably wasn’t a big deal, just drink water, etc. For some reason, my doctor’s office has yet to figure out that, with hyperemesis, drinking a lot of water isn’t easy, and keeping it down can be next to impossible. By the midnight after calling, I was seriously dizzy and crying in bed because I was so scared something was wrong. I told my husband I felt like I was drugged, or like you do right after you donate a lot of blood. Just woozy. We drove to the emergency room, and I was given 2 liters of dextrose water. My potassium was also low, and when they did orthostatics, my heart rate went down by 12 beats when I stood up.

When I got back from the ER, my boss called me the next day. He said he was concerned about my health and the baby, and thought I should ask my doctor about going on an early maternity leave. My company allows up to 6 months of medical leave, and having had my boss’s approval, I asked one of my doctor’s assistants about it. This particular one was a woman I had never seen or spoken to. She was absolutely shocked that I would want to go on leave this soon; I was only 4 ½ months along! She told me that she had never seen a patient with morning sickness this bad. I asked her what she recommended I do; what do other patients do when they have hyperemesis and cannot work?, I asked. She said with a laugh, “I don’t know, I guess they just suck it up.” Wow. Talk about a completely uneducated medical professional. I don’t know who this woman was; I have yet to see her in person! But to suggest that I just suck it up like “everyone else,” even though she had never seen a patient this bad… that completely infuriated me. Here I was, going on UNPAID medical leave for 6 months. Did she think I was really that lazy and that much of a whiner that I would want to go off work for that long and bring no money in? How could she laugh at me, when I was that sick and was facing serious financial trouble with this decision I had to make? I was furious.

And then you’ve got the well-meaning people who try to give you suggestions left and right about what helps morning sickness. Eat saltines, they say. And I swear, if one more person tells me to eat a damn saltine, I might blow up on them. Saltines don’t do anything!, I want to scream. I throw up saltines; you know, the food that’s supposed to make me feel better? People tell me to constantly nibble on something, or drink ginger tea. Oh yeah, the ginger tea remedy is one that I hear a lot. Well, I’ve tried ginger tea, ginger chews, ginger ale, all of it… and it doesn’t work for me. I’m happy to hear it worked for you, I’ve tried it, now stop suggesting it, PLEASE.

There’s also the people who just flat out DO NOT UNDERSTAND. You explain to them what’s going on, and they retort with, “Oh, I had really bad morning sickness, too.” I can understand that they’re just trying to empathize, and I do believe that they had a lousy time with their morning sickness (heck, maybe some of them actually had hyperemesis, too), but hyperemesis is so much more than really bad morning sickness. It takes a toll on your psyche and your family and your home life and your work life and everything. When every other person you talk to about hyperemesis says they had the same thing, it makes you feel like this horrible thing you’re going through is being belittled and it hurts. I shouldn’t expect people to understand when my own doctor doesn’t understand, yet I do.

I have also had people express concern or upset that I was not eating right for the baby, or drinking enough water, or exercising enough. The people who say these things are usually men, or women who had eventless, perfect pregnancies, or anyone who hasn’t had children. They encourage me to eat salad and take long walks. What these people don’t understand is that for most of my pregnancy, not only has eating made me sick. Going outside has made me sick. Sunlight has made me sick. So has driving in a car, being a passenger in a car, preparing food, cleaning the house, going up and down stairs, smelling dog food, bending over too quickly, and hugging or kissing my husband. I am not concerned with eating my green vegetables as much as I’m concerned with just eating anything. As far as exercising, taking a brisk walk out in the bright sun can feel like torture at times.

One of the most hurtful experiences I’ve had was when we told a good friend of ours that I had been hospitalized for dehydration and nausea. He got a look a disapproval on his face and told me how I had to drink water for the baby. He looked at me like it was my fault that I was throwing up water, like I could somehow will myself to keep the water down. I’m not sure why that particular experience hurt. Perhaps I felt like he should’ve known better, or maybe it was all of the past comments from everyone else catching up to me.

So right now, I am on unpaid medical leave until I have the baby and 8 weeks after. That is most likely at least 6 months away or a couple weeks over. My husband has taken a second job and works 7 days a week to make ends meet. I’ve sold one of my horses (I had 2) to pay our rent for the next 6 months; we really can’t afford the other horse either but he’s old and can’t be ridden, and is pretty much unsellable. We have considered applying for WIC and food stamps, and I hate getting help because I feel like, we chose to get pregnant, and we should be able to pay for our own needs without government assistance. I’m not against people getting help for what they need, but I didn’t think that we would need help. I never saw us in that position. I know that we could not have seen this coming, but that doesn’t stop certain people from constantly reminding me that they told me I could have morning sickness. There we go again with the “it’s just bad morning sickness” routine. I feel terrible that I can’t work or keep the house cleaner, and I feel like my husband is worn out from all this. I worry about what my parents and in-laws and other family members and friends must think of me. Would you look at her? Taking 6 months of medical leave and forcing her husband to take 2 jobs because she’s got morning sickness? Heck, I wonder what my husband must think of me. Despite the fact that he’s seen how sick I’ve been (he’s held up my hair when I’ve thrown up, driven me to the emergency room and stayed there with me all night, and been just all around a really awesome husband), I still wonder if he thinks that maybe I could just suck it up. I even wonder if I could just suck it up and somehow continue working. Of course, when I think about it rationally, I know working isn’t an option anymore. What’s important at this point is getting our daughter, Gracie, here, safe and sound, and getting Mommy and Daddy through it without losing their minds in the process.

I am almost 22 weeks pregnant and I currently have an OB/GYN who doesn’t understand this illness or its consequences in the slightest. I stay in my apartment all day, alone, either sick or bored out of my mind because my husband has to be off working. I cry a lot. I also sleep a lot. You can’t throw up when you’re sleeping, and you don’t feel boredom when you sleep.

I’m hoping things get easier. I want to switch doctors. It’s a little late in the game, I know, but to be honest, I don’t want that woman delivering my child. I don’t want someone who doesn’t even try to understand taking me through the rest of this pregnancy. Incidentally, every ER doctor I’ve seen has been angelic. Why don’t any of them start an OB/GYN practice? I wish they could. I’d be the first patient.

Right now, the big thing is trying to cope with the guilt and the depression that comes with hyperemesis. When I’m not sick, getting outside and taking a walk helps, or going to see my parents and sister. I don’t usually plan activities with people because I never know if I will be sick that day or not. I forced myself to go to my two birthday dinners, and promptly threw up and/or had a thoroughly miserable, nauseating time. So now I don’t really make plans. I live my life spur of the moment, if you can really call it that. I guess it’s not spur of the moment if, in actuality, hyperemesis is controlling your schedule.

I know that in the end this will be worth it. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the experience, but I know in my heart that once I hold my daughter in my arms, it suddenly won’t matter anymore. I can’t wait for March (or April) to get here, so I can hold her and kiss her and count her fingers and toes. I haven’t seen her other than in a grainy black-and-white ultrasound image, but I already know she’s the most beautiful little girl I’ve ever laid eyes on. I’ve seen the profile shot of her little button nose. One picture showed her eyelashes and eyelids, and it melted my heart. Can you imagine how pretty and perfect those eyelashes and eyelids will look in color, in person? I smile just anticipating it, and it makes dealing with the hyperemesis a tiny bit easier.

Thank you for listening to my rants and raves. This took a load off.