A friend asked me how my pregnancies had been.
I told her my story: nausea for every waking moment, vomiting more than ten times a day, IV drips, a long list of medications. She listened, paused and said: "That sounds awful. I had something similar, but it wasn't as bad as yours."
Then she told me her story.
She lost 6kg in her first trimester. The nausea was relentless. She couldn't eat properly and drinking was a struggle. She told me that even the smell of water made her feel sick. Her day to day life was severely affected as a result. What she was describing was hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), but she didn't know that. She didn't know that it was a recognised condition with a name or that help existed. She assumed this was simply what pregnancy looked like.
I've had this conversation so many times. Someone tells me "What you went through sounds horrible" and then when I listen to their story, they describe an experience with pregnancy sickness that is just as debilitating. These women needed support. They just didn't realise that their symptoms qualified for it.
Pregnancy sickness exists on a spectrum, from mild to severe, the severe end being hyperemesis gravidarum, or HG. But what does "severe" actually mean?
The latest guidelines from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the body that sets standards and advocates for women's healthcare in the UK and beyond, state that HG is diagnosed when nausea and/or vomiting is severe enough to cause an inability to eat and drink normally and strongly limits daily activities of living.
Not whether you were admitted to hospital. Not how many weeks it lasted. Not whether your symptoms were worse than someone else's. Whether you could function. That's the measure.
We can often minimise what we are going through because someone else had it "worse," or because we assume this is just part of the deal. The reality is that every woman who experiences pregnancy sickness and is finding it hard to cope deserves help. What matters is whether the woman, and the woman alone, is struggling to cope with her symptoms.
And that, on its own, is enough to warrant care and support.