I was at a child's birthday party, talking to someone who has since become a close friend. She had been through severe pregnancy sickness too, and we were comparing notes.
Someone else came over and caught the end of the conversation.
"Oh, what's that?" she asked.
So we explained what it was like.
"I think I had that," she said.
Then two other women joined in. "I had that too." "Oh, I just assumed that being that unwell was normal."
It has a name. Hyperemesis gravidarum, or HG, is a severe form of pregnancy sickness. This is how the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) describes it:
- Nausea and vomiting of which one is severe, beginning in early pregnancy (before 16 weeks of gestation).
- Inability to eat and drink normally.
- Strongly limiting daily living activities.
Many of the women in that conversation described exactly these symptoms, and none of them had known it had a name. I myself didn't know it had a name until I was weeks deep in symptoms.
The enormity of that never fails to hit me.
Yes, pregnancy sickness is common. Most women suffer from some form of it. Of those, 40% have mild symptoms, 46% moderate and 14% severe.
What we were talking about in that conversation was sadly not the kind that is mild. Nobody's experience could be described as normal.
But we tend to measure ourselves against the worst case we have heard of and decide that ours is just a very bad case of "morning sickness", and that this is what it is meant to feel like.
So we don't ask for help. We push through. We fight. We crawl our way to the end.
The whole experience is utterly depleting, and we do it anyway, because that is what women have done for a very long time.
I hope that in 10 years' time, when there is a similar conversation at a birthday party, it ends up being a very different one.
I hope pregnancy sickness is better understood, better researched and better treated.
And most of all, I hope the women having it are comparing much better notes.