These words were said to me by a woman I had just met. I was making a peppermint tea; she was pouring herself a coffee.
She told me that she had one child and had wanted another one for years. But the nausea and vomiting in her pregnancy had been so severe that she didn't feel like she could go through it again. The PTSD, anxiety, and depression had stayed with her long after her pregnancy.
"For the first time in years, I have hope," she said to me, with tears in her eyes.
We were speaking during a coffee break at the International Conference on Hyperemesis Gravidarum (ICHG) in Bergen, Norway. Just before that conversation, we had both been sitting in a session about upcoming randomised controlled trials that will test whether different treatment protocols could reduce, or even prevent, the severity of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.
We are still some way from knowing which approaches will prove safe and effective, but the fact these trials are happening marks a major shift for the field of hyperemesis gravidarum (HG).
What stayed with me from the conference was just how many people are working to make a difference in this field, each tackling the problem from different angles. Scientists. Clinicians. Researchers. Charities. Specialist services. And of course, women with lived experience telling the human side of the story, the part that no dataset can fully capture.
Rain falling on rock does very little on its own. But enough of it, over time, carves rivers through mountains.
The progress being made in this field is a river formed from decades of persistence by many different people. We are still some way from the ocean, the day no woman has to suffer through this condition.
But for the first time in a very long time, the ocean is in sight.