as seen on Mamamia - http://www.mamamia.com.au/health-wellbeing/kate-middleton-hyperemesis-gravidarum/
So, Princess Kate has Hyperemesis Gravidarum – described as “acute morning sickness”.
Pfft. This is what it really feels like…
A week or so before your period is due, waves of nausea interrupt your day, and one evening you start to vomit. By the time you do your pregnancy test, you are vomiting a couple of times a day – you know you must be pregnant before that little blue line tells you. But instead of being a joyful celebration of a much longed-for baby, the moment is fraught with fear about how you’ll cope with this level of nausea and vomiting for the predicted 12 weeks. Little do you know Hyperemesis Gravidarum bypasses this magic number completely, often lasting for at least half the pregnancy, sometimes the whole nine months.
You start being kept awake at night with nausea – no position you lay in will ease it, even rolling ever-so gently causes you to vomit and the only thing you can do is cry. This is not “morning”, it is the middle of the night… morning is much worse. You try and get out of bed and carry on with your life as normal, but it causes violent vomiting, time and time again. After vomiting for the seventh time in an hour you start counting, in both disbelief and deep fear.
After a week, you find this devastating nausea never leaves, and the incessant vomiting is going on all day and sporadically throughout the night. You are crippled with sickness, rendered bedridden 24 hours a day. You’re desperately worried about your baby, because you have not been able to eat a morsel of food, and the thought of putting some liquid down your throat brings on a swell of nausea and more vomiting. Yet you’re so thirsty – you’re hot, you feel dry and arid inside, and all you want to do is gulp great glassfuls of some sort of liquid. You shiver as if with a fever, but it’s your body responding to dehydration.
You haven’t showered because the one time you tried, the raining drops were enough to make your weakened body so faint you had to lie on the floor tiles. Reaching up to turn off the tap was all you could manage until someone came and dressed you and carried you back to bed.
After three weeks of nothing to eat or drink you feel skeletal. Your husband forces you to go to the doctor. The car trip seems undoable, but somehow he gets you there, stopping many times for the relentless vomiting. The doctor looks at your grey face, your lips cracked and bleeding with dehydration, your dried out tongue stuck to the inside of your mouth, your weight loss of nine kilos in three weeks. He admits you immediately into hospital.
The hospital staff take seven attempts to insert a canular into veins which are so dehydrated they keep collapsing. Then they leave you, attached to life giving nutrients and fluids. The nausea and vomiting continues but despite this after a few days you feel as if you might not die. But they will not let you leave the ward until you can drink by yourself, and this is still proving impossible – small sips of room temperature water, flat lemonade, ginger beer, even sucking on ice cubes – you have tried everything the nurses have suggested but still it causes vomiting.
The doctor decides to administer IV anti-nausea medication. It finally provides a window of relief and for the first time in weeks you manage some small sips of apple juice. You are allowed to go home with an oral version of the anti-nausea medication. Doctors and midwives assure you repeatedly that it is safe for your baby; that the malnutrition and dehydration is far worse for both of you.
However, the oral version proves ineffective and you are back lying on the Emergency department floor vomiting. You are only eight weeks pregnant, and do not yet realise that this condition can last all pregnancy. You’ve started to lose the will to survive this, and there is no end in sight.
The doctors are calling this thing Hyperemesis Gravidarum. It is not morning sickness – it’s a different kettle of fish altogether, when your life stops, you’re bedridden and you cannot achieve something as simple as a sip of water. You read later in researching Hyperemesis that English novelist Charlotte Bronte died of the condition in 1855.
The implications of the condition are: Use of medication throughout the pregnancy to slow the vomiting and reduce the nausea – an anti-emetic used by Chemotherapy patients commonly. Then there will be regular hospital stays to keep rehydration up. If these things are not proving effective enough, then there are steroids, but like all options, there are side effects for the mother and baby in some cases. If this doesn’t work you are looking at spending the whole pregnancy in hospital, drinking via a drip, and receiving nutrients via a feeding tube – in some cases one inserted into the jugular bypassing the stomach.
And if none of this works? In rare cases, we have to look at saving both the mother and baby’s lives, they say, and deliver early – some cases as early as 26 weeks gestation.
All you can do is look at them in disbelief. How is it possible that pregnancy is so natural to most women in this world, and yet making this little life can have put you on a path that in the past has caused death?
Personally, I consider myself lucky. My Hyperemesis lasts for about seven months of the pregnancy, then changes to morning sickness - just one little vomit a day with all day nausea, til the end. I have taken the drugs, to the open disgust of some people, and most of the time I feel as if they’re ineffective because I still end up in hospital, and what I really want them to do is take the torture away altogether. But I cannot do nothing, because then I would feel as if I was just welcoming that dying feeling.
But you know what? This is the fourth time I have lived through Hyperemesis Gravidarum. And you know why? Because there is no prize more worth it.
But until then, let’s not forget that Princess Kate is not suffering “acute morning sickness”: She is suffering hell.
The Pest Scale
Many parents number their children. You know, “Number 1 goes to school now, number 2 is at preschool and number 3 is at home with me.”
Me, I have decided I will also number my children, but my numbers will go backwards. And that is because I use the Pest Scale Numbering System.
The mathematical equation behind this piece of genius, if I do say so myself, is this: The further down the line you are in birth order (for example, the traditional ‘Number 3’), the bigger the pest you are, therefore the further you move up the Pest Scale. Number 1 being The Ultimate Pest.
At times I am fooled into thinking our first born is not a pest at all. He was always our quiet little mouse, never said boo, never wanted to cause trouble, always wanted to be a good boy. And he is still like that somewhere deep inside. Now though, he has learned school yard attitood. I know it’s a survival necessity, and in a way I am pleased my quiet little mouse is keeping up and not being trodden all over. But it does bring out pest qualities at home. Anyway, he is at the lower end of the pest scale. A number 3.
Our second born is also our Number 2 on the Pest Scale. Since nearly birth he has climbed all over his big brother, and pestered him in ways I never knew existed – nag, pull, push, jump on, take things away from and wake him up in the early morning because he’s bored. He isLOUD, all the time, and he loves to play tricks on his parents. Like the time he pulled daddy’s shorts down in Bunnings hardware store….at the cash register….with a loooooong queue behind them.
God bless Pest Number 2.
And our third born, aged 2.5 years old, well, right now she is throwing very small pieces from the game we were quietly playing earlier, toward all corners of the house. Whilst yelling. Or perhaps it is singing – I can’t tell because they happen at the same volume intensity. Definitely Pest Numero Uno, Star of the Pest-giving Day. Now she is stuffing those same small pieces in Number 2’s pyjama pants. She has drawn on walls untouched by the two boys before her, and she can fart the loudest, usually squarely placed close to a brother's face. She answers the “Ok, I’m going now… leaving you behind” in the shopping centre, with a "bye" and wave in the opposite direction. She torments number 2 – her first sentence was “He did it!”, and pits Pest 3 Number against Pest Number 2 right when their getting on really well. Her father is planning her chastity belt now.
Major. Pest.
Now that I think of it, she’s at a good age to teach the pull pants down trick….
Me, I have decided I will also number my children, but my numbers will go backwards. And that is because I use the Pest Scale Numbering System.
The mathematical equation behind this piece of genius, if I do say so myself, is this: The further down the line you are in birth order (for example, the traditional ‘Number 3’), the bigger the pest you are, therefore the further you move up the Pest Scale. Number 1 being The Ultimate Pest.
At times I am fooled into thinking our first born is not a pest at all. He was always our quiet little mouse, never said boo, never wanted to cause trouble, always wanted to be a good boy. And he is still like that somewhere deep inside. Now though, he has learned school yard attitood. I know it’s a survival necessity, and in a way I am pleased my quiet little mouse is keeping up and not being trodden all over. But it does bring out pest qualities at home. Anyway, he is at the lower end of the pest scale. A number 3.
Our second born is also our Number 2 on the Pest Scale. Since nearly birth he has climbed all over his big brother, and pestered him in ways I never knew existed – nag, pull, push, jump on, take things away from and wake him up in the early morning because he’s bored. He isLOUD, all the time, and he loves to play tricks on his parents. Like the time he pulled daddy’s shorts down in Bunnings hardware store….at the cash register….with a loooooong queue behind them.
God bless Pest Number 2.
And our third born, aged 2.5 years old, well, right now she is throwing very small pieces from the game we were quietly playing earlier, toward all corners of the house. Whilst yelling. Or perhaps it is singing – I can’t tell because they happen at the same volume intensity. Definitely Pest Numero Uno, Star of the Pest-giving Day. Now she is stuffing those same small pieces in Number 2’s pyjama pants. She has drawn on walls untouched by the two boys before her, and she can fart the loudest, usually squarely placed close to a brother's face. She answers the “Ok, I’m going now… leaving you behind” in the shopping centre, with a "bye" and wave in the opposite direction. She torments number 2 – her first sentence was “He did it!”, and pits Pest 3 Number against Pest Number 2 right when their getting on really well. Her father is planning her chastity belt now.
Major. Pest.
Now that I think of it, she’s at a good age to teach the pull pants down trick….
Brothers
You grow quiet as we drive in to the school grounds and you anticipate him leaving you. You wimper every time his school bag and friendship retreat off down into the playground and we drive away.
Your voice rises in excitement as he gets in the car at the end of the day, and you go through every detail of your last six hours, lest he might have missed you as much as you’ve missed him. He looks at you through tired-glazed eyes, but knows it’s important to you… “That sounds like fun!” he musters up, looking straight into your smiling eyes, smiling as well.
Now you need to know what he did during his day; who he played with, how was art class and what was in his lunchbox today. “Was it fun?”
You sit as close to him as you can, while he unwinds on the lounge with some tele after school. Sometimes it’s right up and on him. You chatter through the story he’s trying to listen to. He doesn’t mind. He has missed you just as much. He puts his arm around you and you snuggle under the blanket together.
We drop you off for an hour at nanny’s, and he strains out the window, yelling “have fun” as we drive off. He repeats over and over that he thinks you’ll have a fun time, convincing himself that you’ll be alright in your separation. And as soon as that hour is up, he is asking when we will go and get you.
You play together, rumble, and spend most of your time giggling. You bicker, but never argue; one of you always feels sorry for the other ultimately and the friendship is immediately restored. If you are in trouble, he sticks up for you.. “he wants to say sorry mum”…
You have copied him from the moment you could: Laughing when he laughed at 4 months old, at what you didn’t know… Walking two steps behind him everywhere when you were one…Building the same Lego ship when you were four. Now I watch you observe him reading and learning at five, knowing that will be next.
You want to be clever at art like him, and brilliant at soccer, just the same as him. But it pains you when you can’t keep up. And when I suggest doing something different, using your own special skills, you look at me in amusement, as if I’ve gone mad.
My sister asks how she will ever love another baby as much as she loves her first. I say, you will, it will be just as amazing and great. But, infinitely better, is that then, you will see them love each other.
Saving Miss Molly
The first man told me he could see nothing wrong. “But bring her back in four hours and we’ll have another look.”
The next woman said it was usually nothing but we’ll do the standard blood tests and xray.
The next man, an hour’s drive away, said we’re going to operate. Now.
They said to sing to my limp six month-old baby as she fell off the precipice of consciousness and into emergency surgery.
The next man said we’ve cleaned her up, and now she’ll have medicine in her jugular for a month.
That man got out of his bed at 1am in the dead of winter, a year ago next week, to save our baby’s life. He came to visit the next morning. He looked like he could cry when he said to me “you’ve had a bad night hey? Is she not doing that well?”
At later bad news he did suggest a tear in my presence. “I’m sorry I couldn’t hide my worry…” I said I wouldn’t get through this with a doctor who didn’t show he cares.
We were "part of the furniture" they said, we were there that long. Women and men crowded around us like a pair of arms, carrying us, caring for us, showing us love while we were isolated from those who loved us. My baby floated upon their compassion, up and down, through needles, tubes, oxygen and isolation. They dragged me when I stopped, heavy on the outskirts of their responsibility, crying, sleepless, insane and unsure.
‘Nurse’ and ‘doctor’ are silly words. These people have God in them. They save lives. They saved mine: Our baby survived.
Sydney Children’s Hospital made her little life that is less, much more. Next week (from Monday 11 June) is Gold Week, a fund raiser for the hospital. You never know, you may just need it too one day. http://www.goldweektelethon.com.au/views/donate.aspx
The next woman said it was usually nothing but we’ll do the standard blood tests and xray.
The next man, an hour’s drive away, said we’re going to operate. Now.
They said to sing to my limp six month-old baby as she fell off the precipice of consciousness and into emergency surgery.
The next man said we’ve cleaned her up, and now she’ll have medicine in her jugular for a month.
That man got out of his bed at 1am in the dead of winter, a year ago next week, to save our baby’s life. He came to visit the next morning. He looked like he could cry when he said to me “you’ve had a bad night hey? Is she not doing that well?”
At later bad news he did suggest a tear in my presence. “I’m sorry I couldn’t hide my worry…” I said I wouldn’t get through this with a doctor who didn’t show he cares.
We were "part of the furniture" they said, we were there that long. Women and men crowded around us like a pair of arms, carrying us, caring for us, showing us love while we were isolated from those who loved us. My baby floated upon their compassion, up and down, through needles, tubes, oxygen and isolation. They dragged me when I stopped, heavy on the outskirts of their responsibility, crying, sleepless, insane and unsure.
‘Nurse’ and ‘doctor’ are silly words. These people have God in them. They save lives. They saved mine: Our baby survived.
Sydney Children’s Hospital made her little life that is less, much more. Next week (from Monday 11 June) is Gold Week, a fund raiser for the hospital. You never know, you may just need it too one day. http://www.goldweektelethon.com.au/views/donate.aspx
Goodbye to the last one.
Our little Miss had her “interview” for preschool today, she’s due to start next year. I am sad.
It feels like I’m letting go of all my children, all at once, with her, the last, taking that first step away. Right now I know everything she does, everywhere she goes, who she talks to, who she yells at and who she cuddles.
I have full faith in the preschool she’s going to, they’re about as caring as I think one could get in that environment. I have no qualms that her preschool teachers aim to raise their class just as we try to as parents at home – with the right amount of strictness, inspiration and, most importantly, caring.
And boy, at the moment, I could probably do with the space because are our kids driving me c-razy! The noise… urgh….and she’s the noisiest of them all! But I usually relish the chaos kid’s cause. So I still don’t want her to go.
I’m frightened of the silent space which will greet me when I come home alone. Getting in the car alone. Doing the food shopping with no one in the trolley seat to giggle with…. even though I might actually get some of the things that are on my list this way.
I’m not so good with ‘me time’, I like to be busy, and a 2 year old certainly fills that need. I will work, but it’s ‘from home’ work, which will be in that empty silent space, by my empty silent self.
I know it’s not ground breaking stuff, every mother’s gone through it, and their life has gone on – nay, they say they even enjoy it! So I will think of all you mums: How you can now go and help in reading groups with your other kids at school, how you can get your hair done in longer than 10 minutes whilst shovelling food into someone trying to climb out of the trolley. I can’t think of anything else, but I’m sure there are tonnes of things I’ll be able to do.
After I’ve cried a bit.
It feels like I’m letting go of all my children, all at once, with her, the last, taking that first step away. Right now I know everything she does, everywhere she goes, who she talks to, who she yells at and who she cuddles.
I have full faith in the preschool she’s going to, they’re about as caring as I think one could get in that environment. I have no qualms that her preschool teachers aim to raise their class just as we try to as parents at home – with the right amount of strictness, inspiration and, most importantly, caring.
And boy, at the moment, I could probably do with the space because are our kids driving me c-razy! The noise… urgh….and she’s the noisiest of them all! But I usually relish the chaos kid’s cause. So I still don’t want her to go.
I’m frightened of the silent space which will greet me when I come home alone. Getting in the car alone. Doing the food shopping with no one in the trolley seat to giggle with…. even though I might actually get some of the things that are on my list this way.
I’m not so good with ‘me time’, I like to be busy, and a 2 year old certainly fills that need. I will work, but it’s ‘from home’ work, which will be in that empty silent space, by my empty silent self.
I know it’s not ground breaking stuff, every mother’s gone through it, and their life has gone on – nay, they say they even enjoy it! So I will think of all you mums: How you can now go and help in reading groups with your other kids at school, how you can get your hair done in longer than 10 minutes whilst shovelling food into someone trying to climb out of the trolley. I can’t think of anything else, but I’m sure there are tonnes of things I’ll be able to do.
After I’ve cried a bit.
Mothers Day
For me, Mothers Day is bigger than my birthday. It is the only day, reserved entirely for thanking a mother. Tell me, how often does that happen? I don’t care that Hallmark reminds husbands and teenagers for the 5 months preceding – they know it takes that long to sink in.
I thought it might be time to compile my top ten Mothers Day Spoiling Tips. (For whomever would like to inform my husband):
1) In the lead up: Great excitement from my children about what they have made me, or bought all by themselves, with my last spare coffee money, at the school mother’s day stall.
2) On the morning: Open my hand made ashtray and dusty Yardley soap in bed, surrounded by all my amazing little (and one big) beauties (yes, on this morning even my husband and his morning breath qualify as beaut). Cry a lot with gratitude.
3) Surprised by a hand-penned poem from my husband all about how much he appreciates every tiny little stress I undergo, the complete and utter exhaustion, and incredible difficulty involved in the HERCULEAN tasks that are managing our family. Poem MUST note all tasks individually. I mean, does note all tasks individually. Cry again.
4) Go out for breakfast. Never breakfast in bed. Sleeping with sand, crayons, the odd shoe and those missing pieces of Lego left in my bed by “NOT ME” is enough, without adding scratchy toast crumbs.
5) Children sit like little drugged up angels for a luscious, long, lazy breakfast, in a sunny window looking out at the beach, with about five coffee top ups and an entire SMH read cover to cover. Ahhhh…
6) Surprise my mum with something which I really hope conveys how much I love her and appreciate every little task she has undertaken to bring me into, and up in, the world.
7) Celebrate with my sister on her first, and most important Mothers Day, for which her Little Miss 8 Months Old is currently crawling the shops. Or making an ashtray.
8) Tetsuya comes to our house to cook for our extended family, we all sip champagne, in the sun, complete with a professional foot massage, while the cranky great aunt twice-removed and all cousins sleep, concurrently, for about 6 hours.
9) A little champagne-induced nanna nap.
10) Cry again at how blessed I am to have my beautiful family, even if all this did only happen during my champagne-induced nanna nap dreams.
I thought it might be time to compile my top ten Mothers Day Spoiling Tips. (For whomever would like to inform my husband):
1) In the lead up: Great excitement from my children about what they have made me, or bought all by themselves, with my last spare coffee money, at the school mother’s day stall.
2) On the morning: Open my hand made ashtray and dusty Yardley soap in bed, surrounded by all my amazing little (and one big) beauties (yes, on this morning even my husband and his morning breath qualify as beaut). Cry a lot with gratitude.
3) Surprised by a hand-penned poem from my husband all about how much he appreciates every tiny little stress I undergo, the complete and utter exhaustion, and incredible difficulty involved in the HERCULEAN tasks that are managing our family. Poem MUST note all tasks individually. I mean, does note all tasks individually. Cry again.
4) Go out for breakfast. Never breakfast in bed. Sleeping with sand, crayons, the odd shoe and those missing pieces of Lego left in my bed by “NOT ME” is enough, without adding scratchy toast crumbs.
5) Children sit like little drugged up angels for a luscious, long, lazy breakfast, in a sunny window looking out at the beach, with about five coffee top ups and an entire SMH read cover to cover. Ahhhh…
6) Surprise my mum with something which I really hope conveys how much I love her and appreciate every little task she has undertaken to bring me into, and up in, the world.
7) Celebrate with my sister on her first, and most important Mothers Day, for which her Little Miss 8 Months Old is currently crawling the shops. Or making an ashtray.
8) Tetsuya comes to our house to cook for our extended family, we all sip champagne, in the sun, complete with a professional foot massage, while the cranky great aunt twice-removed and all cousins sleep, concurrently, for about 6 hours.
9) A little champagne-induced nanna nap.
10) Cry again at how blessed I am to have my beautiful family, even if all this did only happen during my champagne-induced nanna nap dreams.
Coffee and Cake - an illustration for all husbands.
Well, at least we did plan to go out for coffee and cake, as all husbands believe we do. You know ladies, all that sitting around with your friends, cappuccinos, lattes, tiramisu cakes all round; with all our hundreds of six, four and two year olds seated calmly on their own table next to us - not yelling or whingeing or ignoring people or conducting hurdle races over the café poufs or climbing onto the Gloria Jeans bain marie and telling the waitress she’s a bum bum head. Just sitting nicely, not a mother’s voice raised or a death stare delivered. No.
However, sickness struck us the first week. Just a small delay to the normal proceedings, you understand, husbands. I did have the coffee – in fact, quite a lot of coffee, for those 4am wake ups, then again at 7, 8, 9 and 10am, 1, 2, 3, 4 and wine PM. Did I say wine? Oh…
So we had coffee and coughing instead. Croup, to be exact – otherwise known as honking by Mr Middle Man. “Why am I honking mummy?” he asks, as he forces out a deep ferry-approaching type sound. Pretty good description I reckon. The unfunny part though is that they cannot breathe with croup. So I spent the week dishing out ventolin, steroids, and ferry loads of garlic (apologies to the postman who was the only person who smelt us for SEVEN DAYS).
But we’re patient, we can wait for the cake part.
Week two approaches. We tentatively edge out the door, waiting for the cold wind to whip up three children into an asthmatic frenzy along with theatrics (collapsing, grasping chest, rolling around in the driveway, you know the stuff…don’t you?). We make it to the café, finally, for our coffee and cake.
My coffee goes cold whilst delivering ventolin, tissues and valium-I mean water. And the café had run out of cake. Nevertheless, my beautiful post-honking children managed to down a milkshake like it was the last remaining non-garlic thing in this world. Then they arked up a bit and wanted to go to the park. Things were looking up!
A few meagre swings, sand play and a spinny thing later, as we approach home, Master Spinny Thing Six claims he feels a little–BLAAARRRGH! My car, my poor, sodden, chunked up car, was covered in vomit. Now I’ve never had this happen before, and I would otherwise consider myself lucky that I'd avoided this for six years. But if I think about how much garlic and milkshake a four month old baby could extract in one spectacular mouth eruption, it aint anywhere near the volume of someone 20 times their size. No sirreee….
After cleaning up said car covering and intricate ins and outs of a child restraint, for two hours, I came inside to be greeted with a full glass of milk dropped on its head, which left my half done photo albums and photos floating, and the loungeroom floor covered, edge to edge. And to top the afternoon off, Little Miss Toilet Trained, appear to have forgotten the trainED part, and left nice puddles for me to clean up for the proceeding three hours. A day of cleaning. Cold coffee and no cake.
Let’s try again. In the ensuing days we booked up some play dates and were raring to leave these four walls, which the children were now climbing, using 900 decibel crow type sounds. But instead of organising play dates, I should have organised an Ark. Because rain, did it rain! Yet still, enthusiasm reigning, we ventured out….to the City, an hour away: Where I found myself - having not packed enough food for three ravenous hyena’s - parked miles from our destination as the heavens opened, missing a rain jacket for one child, facing 379, 000 steps between us and our target with a heavy two-year-old child covered up in a pram. It was at this point that I gave up.
Coffee and cake can wait: 500 litres of Gin please, hold the tonic.
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