My name is Naila, I’m 33 years old, and I’m the mom of a little Naël who is almost 4 months old. I had a very complicated pregnancy, one I didn’t expect at all, and it was light years away from the image we often have of pregnancy today. I suffered from a condition that’s not very well known, and it took me a while to understand it myself: hyperemesis gravidarum. It’s unpronounceable, even I still struggle to say it. HG for those in the know. It’s nausea, then vomiting, and a bunch of other bodily disruptions you go through. It’s quite intense and can land you in the hospital. In fact, I was hospitalized.
When I found out I was pregnant, it was good news. I knew my life would be turned upside down, but I still had more than eight months to prepare for it. Pregnancy is actually quite a long cycle. I found out I was pregnant pretty quickly. The first few weeks went by normally; I didn’t notice anything different, until one Sunday morning I remember very clearly.
Hyperemesis gravidarum
I woke up with extreme fatigue, as if I hadn’t slept in four days or had just recovered from a bad flu. At first, I thought, "Here it is, the first pregnancy symptoms are kicking in." I was only five weeks pregnant. Just one month, really, which is very early. I thought it was normal, at the time it seemed pretty harmless.
But very quickly, I started to experience nausea. At first, it was just in the morning, then it stretched to the entire day, and soon, the whole night. It ramped up gradually and got worse and worse. Within a few weeks, I couldn’t eat anything at all. Nothing. The nausea took over all of my days. My sense of smell became very heightened. It might sound trivial, but it quickly became an assault on my senses. Both good and bad smells—there was no rhyme or reason to it. All the daily tasks became very difficult. Going into the kitchen became impossible because of the smells, and it made me feel miserable.
I couldn’t sleep anymore, especially. I couldn’t fall asleep, and when I finally did, I’d be awake after two or three hours because of the nausea, unable to fall back asleep. At that point, I was talking to my friends about it. They’d also had nausea and fatigue, but they could still live more or less normally, take the metro, get around, maintain a social life. For me, it was unimaginable.
At first, it was just debilitating nausea. Since I’m not the type to wait for things to get better on their own, I immediately started looking for solutions. I was told to try ginger, for example. Of course, it didn’t work. I also tried eating small meals throughout the day, acupuncture, and I saw osteopaths. I took the problem head-on. I didn’t want to be like this for three months.
Around this time, we were entering the second lockdown. I’ve always had a pretty rich social life, but now it was over, and it was also the period when we started working from home as much as possible. I quickly told my boss that I couldn’t come to the office under any circumstances. It was also impossible to see my friends. My social life was completely derailed; with the nausea, I couldn’t do anything anymore.
None of the solutions I tried worked. I saw my general practitioner and my gynecologist to talk about the severe nausea. I told them I couldn’t eat at all, and that worried me as well. They told me it was normal, that every woman goes through this during pregnancy. They told me this so often that eventually, I started to think maybe it was just me, that maybe I was being a bit dramatic.
I should have stopped working because I was exhausted from the lack of sleep, but at first, no doctor wanted to give me sick leave. However, fatigue greatly worsens the symptoms. They told me it was normal. My friends told me it would pass, that they’d all been through it. No one really realized what I was going through, and neither did I.
I lost five kilograms in a matter of weeks. It happens quickly when you don’t eat. I forced myself to eat a little, but it wasn’t much… I even had trouble drinking water, I started to hate it. That’s the real issue with this illness: hydration. I tried some juices, Coca-Cola, sparkling water, but I wasn’t drinking nearly enough at that time. And all of this was before I even started vomiting.
It happened around the two-month mark. I was already at my breaking point, but in fact, that was nothing compared to what was coming. I started vomiting about five times a day. Then it went to fifteen, then twenty-five, and then fifty, even seventy or eighty times a day. Essentially, I was vomiting all the time.
The intensification of symptoms
When I started vomiting thirty times a day and couldn’t tolerate water anymore, I began my first hospitalizations. I went to the maternity hospital where I was supposed to give birth. I explained the situation to them and told them I couldn’t keep water down. There’s the vomiting, and in addition, a sense of general unwellness. To explain this to people, I use the example of a severe flu or gastroenteritis, a condition where you have a fever of 40°C (104°F) and think you’re going to die. Well, honestly, it’s ten times worse than the peak of gastro or flu, and it’s every day, all the time, for months.
I said my body had gone crazy. Everything was overwhelming. Moving from my bed to the couch was the hardest effort of the day. It would take me an hour of mental preparation just to change rooms. I spent my days staring at the ceiling or the floor, focusing to avoid vomiting. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. Normally, I’m not the type to spend a Sunday watching Netflix, that would bore me. I need to go out, to move. But here, I was trapped in a rhythm I’d never experienced, one I didn’t recognize. Meanwhile, health professionals kept telling me that it was nothing, that it would pass. They’d even imply I was exaggerating.
I was being followed at a well-known and reputable level 3 maternity hospital. But even there, it was difficult. I was lucky not to be mistreated, as many women experience, but on the other hand, I wasn’t truly acknowledged. It wasn’t that they thought it was normal, but it didn’t seem to bother them that much. I felt like they didn’t believe me, like they thought I was exaggerating.
When I went to the emergency room for the first time, I was vomiting twenty-five or thirty times a day. I had first gone to my general practitioner, and I vomited three times between the waiting room and the office. She mentioned ginger again or eating small meals, but I wasn’t at the stage where ginger would help. I needed medication. But when you’re pregnant, 90% of medications are off-limits, which I understand because they’re harmful to the fetus. But at least, there should be an effort to help and relieve people. She told me she couldn’t do anything for me and that I needed to go to the hospital.
And that’s how I started going to the hospital. I’d stay all day, and they’d tell me I was dehydrated. They still didn’t tell me what was going on. They called it "first trimester vomiting" without actually telling me what it was. And truly, they always said it was normal. Some nurses looked at me with little compassion. I was hooked up to an IV, getting vitamins during the day.
I remember that all day, I kept vomiting. It was constant, every half hour. The doctors came to see me twice a day, gave me medication, but nothing helped.
When the intern on duty told me to go home, I was both relieved because I didn’t want to spend the night at the hospital hooked up to machines, but at the same time, I was very worried because I knew I would spend the night vomiting. But once again, I was told not to worry, that it would pass after the first trimester. I believed it a little, but at the same time, I cried because it was so hard—it was like a drama.
I wasn’t eating, drinking, or sleeping; I was dehydrated, and I wasn’t being taken seriously. It was the early stages of my pregnancy, and after a while, I started feeling a huge sense of guilt. I kept thinking that I must be the problem. And I still had no name for what was happening to me.
I had two days where it got a little better, only five vomits instead of twenty-five. I thought maybe things were improving. I had found a solution: crushed ice. I started doing research on my symptoms, and that’s when I came across these words: hyperemesis gravidarum.
I found a Facebook group talking about what I was experiencing, but since I was so exhausted and sick, I wasn’t fully engaged. However, I did note that some women said it lasted the entire pregnancy for some. I thought to myself that those must be rare cases, and it couldn’t be that for me.
Except that after two days of relief, it hit me like a tsunami. I had the hormonal peak of the first trimester coming, and everything became so violent. That’s when I started vomiting really a hundred times a day.
I had my basin next to me 24/7 because I started experiencing hypersalivation. I began producing too much saliva. My mouth would constantly fill up with saliva. Not great when you’re already constantly about to vomit. I couldn’t speak without spitting. And I couldn’t tolerate any smells anymore, so I couldn’t sleep in the bedroom.
I reached a point where I had to sleep on the floor, right on the ground, in the living room. I couldn’t tolerate any smells of laundry or any strong odors. It was early December, and I was vomiting every fifteen minutes. It was maddening, with sleepless nights. You just don’t understand.
I had already gone to the hospital two or three times by this point. And it was my mom who told me I had to go back. She believed me because she was there. It’s really one of those things you have to see to believe. She saw it. She used the phrase "vomiting your guts out," and I understood what that meant. I cried and told her that the hospital didn’t care and that I didn’t have the strength to go. The very thought of taking the elevator and dealing with its smells seemed insurmountable, torturous. But for my mom, it had reached a point where the only other option was to call emergency services.
I’m so glad she said that. Because I was completely dehydrated. I was vomiting only water, because when you’re this sick, you can’t eat and, of course, you’re not hungry. You can go without food for days, but you can’t go without drinking. I had an insatiable thirst. Every glass of water made me vomit, but I was so thirsty I drank anyway, and five minutes later, I would vomit. I couldn’t stop drinking.
At this stage, I was vomiting only water and blood. My esophagus was completely burned by the vomiting.
Hospitalization
I was hospitalized for several days, and they finally kept me.
I had a doctor tell me he didn’t know what I had, and he was probably the 8th or 9th one I saw. He told me, "We don’t know why some women react like this, we don’t have a curative medication, we only have some palliative medications, which sometimes work, but not always." There are only three or four others, but they didn’t work for me in terms of nausea/vomiting, probably because no one helped me, and I took them too late... It’s really unfortunate because if the disease had been recognized, with protocols in place, I could have been diagnosed and started proper treatment at the first symptoms. They could have given me medication to protect my throat, for example.
He also told me that this would probably continue until the end of the pregnancy. The guy was telling me he didn’t have a solution, that it would be like this for another six months, but strangely, it was a relief because I finally had someone telling me what to do. He said they were going to keep me in the hospital for several days, that I was very dehydrated, and that the priority was to stop the vomiting.
As for the baby, it didn’t seem to pose much risk for now. It could be more dangerous in much more severe cases. At the start, the baby is so small, and it takes what it needs. It’s quite well-designed. However, if you lose too much weight throughout the pregnancy, you risk preterm labor and a small baby.
In any case, at these moments, you’re in survival mode. You’re so unwell that you don’t even feel pregnant.
I was hospitalized for several days, unable to eat or drink, but the goal was to get my body working again. During those four days, I never got out of bed. I couldn’t stand, speak, or even go to the bathroom. I was out. And I just thirsted. I dreamed of bathing, of drinking water.
Dehydration is serious, and it can happen very quickly. You can become dehydrated in 24 hours. After 48 hours, it gets complicated, and after 72 hours, it can be dangerous and lead to a coma. You can also suffer from serious heart, stomach, and liver issues. I’m glad my mom reacted. A woman who is isolated and uninformed can face devastating consequences. Not to mention the impact of malnutrition, the many deficiencies you develop, muscle problems, and ruined teeth...
I read testimonies of women who ended up in intensive care, in a coma. It’s rare because we’re in France and have access to care. Eventually, you collapse, and they call the emergency services, and they take you. But in underdeveloped countries, that might not be so rare.
What’s insane, even though we’re in France, is this battle you have to fight with the medical professionals to be heard and taken seriously. I just wanted one person to explain what was happening to me and what needed to be done. I was finally told that if I couldn’t keep water down for 24 hours, I needed to go back to the hospital. I couldn’t have known that. There’s a real medical void on this subject, and since we don’t understand it, and because you’re a woman, they conclude it’s all in your head.
That’s what’s so surreal and infuriating. And I was lucky because I wasn’t mistreated. I got sick leave, and they were fairly understanding. Not everyone is that lucky.
So, I stayed in the hospital for four days, and I left when the vomiting calmed down. I was three months pregnant.
Daily life
Until six months, I would vomit up to ten times in half a day during severe episodes. That was the reality of my case. I quickly stopped taking medications because they didn’t work, and I had unpleasant side effects. A doctor told me to stop because they were neuroleptics. I was still ill, but not to the point of needing to go back to the hospital. I kept vomiting, was nauseous 24/7, and had persistent hypersalivation. I still had an issue with smells as well; I felt like even the walls had a smell.
Regarding work, I was on complete sick leave for more than three months. After leaving the hospital, that’s when I went through the hardest psychological phase. I had passed the first trimester, and I realized that this wasn’t going to go away; it was going to be like this the entire time. I still had six months ahead, and I had to accept that I would spend my days trying to stay focused to not vomit and suffer. I lost all my autonomy. I couldn’t shower properly until six months pregnant, I couldn’t cook, nor could I go for a walk. I was dependent on someone all day, every day.
Pregnancy is a choice. When you’ve chosen to be pregnant, and then you experience this, it doesn’t match anything you expected, psychologically, you feel like you’ve imposed something on yourself. You wonder why you did it.
Sharing feelings
What’s important is to talk about that constant feeling of discomfort. I remember telling my loved ones that I just dreamt of having five minutes in a day where I could feel like myself. It was that bad. You never feel good, never, not for a single second. And when it lasts for months, it’s morally hellish.
What really helped me was the association fighting hyperemesis gravidarum. I was able to talk to many women, and for some, it was much worse than me: they were hospitalized throughout their pregnancy. Some lost their babies, others had to abort because it was unbearable. I was in a situation where I could afford not to work: I had someone to help me, and I didn’t yet have a child to care for. One of these women shared that she couldn’t take care of her child because his smell made her want to vomit. It’s very complicated.
Mistreatment
You discover that many women are mistreated by the healthcare system. Women go to the hospital and are told their problem is psychiatric. They’re told that if they’re vomiting, it’s because they’re vomiting their baby, because in reality, they don’t want that child. They’re blamed, labeled as hysterical. It’s double punishment. It’s horrible. Instead of treating them, they isolate them, put them in the dark, without a phone, no visitors. This is France in 2021, in our hospitals. Some women resort to abortion because they aren’t supported.
The illness isolates you because of the symptoms, but also because you feel like no one understands you, or that you’re going crazy. We don’t have support. Some women shared that even the nurses made fun of them; one of them was nicknamed “the vomiter” at the hospital. They had to pretend to eat and hide food in their bag. Others had to swallow their vomit. Crazy stuff.
Once you know what you have, you can find doctors who are somewhat familiar with the illness and can help you. The association has a list of doctors who are interested and try to understand this disease.
Improvement of symptoms
I started to feel a little better at seven and a half months pregnant. I was no longer sick 24/7. I began to eat without needing my basin next to me. Before that, it was always with me, all the time. There’s a Facebook group called “Nine Months with My Basin,” because that’s what it is. You can be sick all the time, at any moment.
The "good" thing is that on days when I wasn’t feeling well, I finally had the hope that tomorrow might be better. I held on to that. When you’re sick all the time for months, you feel like you’ll never get better. You lose hope.
At the beginning of my 9th month, the hypersalivation stopped suddenly. For some women, it lasts until the end. I have no scientific explanation. My hypothesis is that the body can’t handle the changes, the hormone fluctuations, etc. It can’t adjust, so everything goes haywire. I also bled a lot from my nose and mouth. I don’t know why.
Hypersalivation isn’t life-threatening, but it’s very disabling. You can’t talk, you can’t go into a store. You have to carry your basin with you 24/7. Again, I think the drop in hormones at that stage of pregnancy has something to do with it.
Some women don’t like the last month of pregnancy, but for me, it was when I finally felt good. At first, I thought I’d do so many things, but when you have a big belly, there’s not much you can do. But I felt fine, and it lasted for ten days.
Pregnancy and birth
When the baby arrived, I felt like a regular nine-month pregnant woman. I don’t like the term “normal,” so I’ll use “regular.” My symptoms had stopped before I gave birth. For other women, it’s more complicated. When it’s time to give birth, they’re still vomiting, and it’s only when the baby is born, and the placenta is removed, that things really start to improve. A few hours after that, they can eat again and especially rediscover the pleasure of drinking a glass of water. They stop salivating immediately.
In the end, I only had ten days to prepare for the birth. Psychologically, it’s tough because you’re not ready, and you feel better, so you want the pregnancy to last longer, while just before, you only wanted it to stop.
For me, during those nine months, I wasn’t preparing for childbirth or the arrival of the baby, nor was I enjoying my pregnancy. Everything was focused on not being sick anymore.
This condition is extremely difficult for yourself, but also for your loved ones. They don’t know what’s happening to you, and they see it. They can’t do anything because there’s no solution, no medicine. You just have to wait for it to pass. I often think that I was lucky in my misfortune because I had help, my mom was very present, and my partner too, but he couldn’t always be there because he worked mostly out of town, and I really needed help all the time. And once again, I wasn’t mistreated. My family was very understanding.
I also had a difficult childbirth. So there was a buildup that also impacted the postpartum, which is already a very complicated period. I do feel a bit traumatized. For example, last week, I was a little sick, had nausea, and it threw me back into the illness in a very violent way. I panicked, I felt really bad. I felt like I was reliving that time.
I think I even now have an intolerance to natural hormones in the body, like progesterone, because I’ve noticed that nausea typically occurs during ovulation. I’ve talked to people from the association, and several told me that for six months, or even a year after pregnancy, you still carry something from the illness. I sometimes still have a bit of hypersalivation, and sensitivity to smells. Maybe this time it’s psychological; I have no scientific explanation. I think my body has recorded something, and it remembers.
Advice
To women going through this, I would first recommend getting in touch with the association that works to make this condition recognized: the association for the fight against hyperemesis gravidarum. They have a website and a private Facebook group, and they have a network of practitioners and people throughout France who are knowledgeable about the illness. I advise them to act quickly and surround themselves with support as soon as possible, at the first signs.
Since it happens in the first trimester, it's very violent, and you can’t talk about it because no one knows you're pregnant. No one understands what’s happening to you.
There can be a range, from very mild cases to very severe ones, but they all impact daily life. We tend to minimize it.
The example I give to people today is that of a resident on call who came to check on me to ask if I was feeling better. I could barely speak, I had an unbearable level of nausea, and she looked at me with a smile and said that it was normal, it’s pregnancy, and it's not a disease. At that moment, I couldn’t take it anymore, I started crying. For me, you can’t say “it’s normal” to someone who vomits 50 times a day.
It’s like endometriosis, for example. For decades, we were told that menstrual pain was normal, even though some women faint from the pain. They were also told it was normal, or that it was psychiatric.
I think we still don’t treat women the same way we treat men. We tend to believe that women’s pain is more often psychological or psychiatric. It’s tragic because some diseases and sufferings are ignored. Whereas with men, we always have the reflex to acknowledge their pain and give them medication to relieve it. They are taken more seriously. I think today we treat women too much through gender and psychiatry lenses.
For me, it’s a double punishment. You’re sick, and they tell you it’s your fault. I’ve heard so many testimonies from women in distress because they’re not supported, not listened to, and because they’re isolated. You start to go crazy.
We absolutely need to recognize the illness and try to help these women. One of these women, at four or five months of pregnancy, weighed 35 kilos. Some women can’t eat for nine months and are fed by a tube in the hospital. I find these women incredibly brave, especially since some go on to have a second child afterwards.
What you need to know is that if you’ve had it once, you’ll likely have it with each pregnancy. So the question of a second child, a future pregnancy, arises. I’ve always imagined having multiple children, at least two. But now, I can’t see myself going through that again. I can’t see myself pausing nine months of my life, not being able to take care of my son either.
So yes, you know what to expect, and you can take certain precautions. But that doesn’t take away from the difficulty of what you have to go through.
I’ve read only one study that was done on a large scale, fairly serious, and it comes from the United States. It suggests that in fact, two genes might be responsible for HG, and women might have a genetic predisposition to suffer from it.
What I discovered is that I actually have many cases in my family, both maternal and paternal. I had never heard of it before. Probably because they too must have thought it was “normal” to be in this state...
When my mother started talking about my pregnancy to the family, that’s when we began hearing these stories too. As for me, the genetic component is confirmed.
The final word
It’s a lot of happiness to have your child, and people tend to tell me that I’ll forget what happened. But I know I’ll never forget, and I don’t want to. I know that it’s not by forgetting that you get over it. The suffering, the despair I went through for nine months, the loneliness, the isolation.
I won’t forget all the help I received from my loved ones.
And I won’t forget all the testimonies I’ve heard, the stories of distress from women who end up losing their babies, who are traumatized, who go into depression. Depression is not a cause but a consequence of what happens to them and how they’re treated. I’ll never forget.
