Struggling with Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG): Week 23 Update

Yes­ter­day, I hit 23 weeks preg­nant.  Just over halfway.  For most of that 23 weeks, I’ve been suf­fer­ing from the exces­sive nau­sea and vom­it­ing that goes along with Hyper­eme­sis Gravi­darum, or HG. It doesn’t feel pos­si­ble that I’m only half way through.  It feels like this preg­nancy has lasted for­ever.  This has eas­ily been the longest five months of my life.

Luck­ily, the vom­it­ing I described in my first post about liv­ing with HG has less­ened quite a bit.  I’m not sure if it’s less­ened on its own or if I just have it under con­trol now with med­ica­tion.  In the first trimester, the of nau­sea and vom­it­ing of HG caused me to lose 20 pounds. While at home with my fam­ily for the first half of the sec­ond trimester (first six weeks), I man­aged to gain 29 pounds, but my weight has been con­stant over the 3 weeks since return­ing to Ger­many.  Being sur­rounded by fam­ily to help out and hav­ing a mom cook­ing for you all the time helps a lot with weight gain.

I’m still tak­ing the antiemetic dimen­hy­dri­nate, the active ingre­di­ent in Dra­mamine. I take about 100-150mg (the equiv­a­lent of 2–3 Dra­mamine a day, 2 is a good day), which is down quite a bit from the 400mg I was tak­ing at the worst of the nau­sea. While I’m vom­it­ing less (maybe once a week), I’m still deal­ing with exces­sive nau­sea and exhaus­tion, push­ing myself phys­i­cally usu­ally ends in tears and 5–10 min­utes of dry heaving.

This inabil­ity to push myself phys­i­cally has me wor­ried how I will han­dle the birth.  I guess women have had babies after months of bed rest before, so I’ll man­age to do what I have to do, but it wor­ries me a lot that I’m not going in to this as pre­pared as I should be.  One flight of stairs is hard, two flights of stairs is my limit, any more than that and the tears start flow­ing.  On flat sur­faces, I can usu­ally man­age 15–30 min­utes of walk­ing, depend­ing on how slowly I go.  I know this is far from ideal shape to be in prior to giv­ing birth.  But I guess I have four months to go still, maybe things will get better.

I for­got to men­tion in the last post, one of the symp­toms that often goes hand in hand with the exces­sive nau­sea of HG, extreme motion sick­ness.  Car rides require dop­ing up with anti-nausea med­i­cine, mak­ing it impos­si­ble for me to drive any sort of dis­tance.  I can make it to my local super­mar­ket, and that’s as far as I would trust myself to go.  When I was in the US, I couldn’t make it to the near­est out­let mall on the first try (this was just before my hus­band left at the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary).  We stopped halfway, went to a reg­u­lar mall, where I spent most of the time sit­ting in the food court, then headed home.  I did man­age to make it there with my brother shortly before return­ing to Ger­many.  Depend­ing on peo­ple to drive you any­where is frustrating.

The motion sick­ness even occurs with tele­vi­sion and movies.  I went to see “It’s Com­pli­cated” in the US and had to close my eyes for much of the last 20 min­utes because I wasn’t feel­ing well.  I didn’t go any­where near “Avatar,” I fig­ured that would not go well.  Any tele­vi­sion show with quick cuts or a lot of motion is off lim­its as well.

I’m still strug­gling with feel­ing socially iso­lated as well.  At home I was sur­rounded by fam­ily, with my mother and brother even call­ing from work every day just to check if I was okay or needed any­thing.  It’s very lonely in Ger­many where friends have their own lives, fam­i­lies to care for, and prob­lems to deal with.

I try to put on a brave face to the world, but some­times I won­der if this is the best thing for me to do.  Maybe the brave face makes peo­ple think that everything’s hunky dory, when in fact I’m usu­ally just barely hang­ing on.  Ask­ing for help is maybe one of the hard­est things for some­one in need to do.  I don’t want to bother any­one, but some­times even just an occa­sional phone call to chitchat or gos­sip would mean the world.

Face­book has been both a God­send and a tor­ture device. I can com­mu­ni­cate with friends around the world and see what every­one is up to on there, mak­ing me feel like I’m still in the loop, still a part of the world, but see­ing what every­one is up to is a prob­lem as well.  I see that my friends are meet­ing up at a café, get­ting together for play­dates, or just refer­ring to a fun night spent hang­ing out, and I throw myself a lit­tle pity party because HG has made so I’m not up to join­ing in the fun. 

I don’t really know what else to say.  I want to post some­thing uplift­ing, for oth­ers going through my sit­u­a­tion, but I just don’t feel it in my heart.  HG is hard.  The hard­est thing I’ve ever been through.  I know when I see my baby that I’ll feel it was all worth it, that these months were just a small frac­tion of my life, years from now I will prob­a­bly barely remem­ber this time, but it’s hard to feel that now.

I just keep in mind that there are a lot of other women in my same sit­u­a­tion. We’re not alone.  And at the end of this, we’ll have some­thing beau­ti­ful.  There are a lot worse things that peo­ple go through than this, and we should try to keep that in mind.

If you’re suf­fer­ing from HG, hang in there, and check out Hyper­eme­sis Edu­ca­tion and Research web­site.

You may also be interested in reading:

• Struggling with Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG): Week 33 Update (2)
• Struggling with Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG): Week 29 Update (3)
• When it's not just morning sickness: Living with Hyperemesis Gravidarum (17)
• Leo's Birth Story (9)
• Waiting for the Birth (5)

Tagged as: antiemetic, HG, hyperemesis gravidarum, morning sickness, motion sickness, nausea, Pregnancy, vomiting, weight gain