A few months ago I was at an event, telling someone about SIPS, a specialist service and digital platform that I am building for women suffering from pregnancy sickness.
"Pregnancy sickness? I've never heard of anyone having it that bad that they needed medical help. Surely this isn't very many women?"
I gave them the numbers. I cited the literature. I explained that according to meta-analysis, almost 70% of women worldwide experience pregnancy sickness, and of those, around 60% will have moderate to severe symptoms. That's millions of women around the world.
The numbers didn't persuade them. Neither did my own personal story with hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a severe form of pregnancy sickness. The implication that lingered underneath was: if they had never seen it, how prevalent could it actually be?
It made me think about how much suffering women absorb quietly.
We don't see the woman who has memorised every toilet on her route to work, slipping away between meetings to be sick before returning to her desk to smile and carry on.
We don't see the woman whose nausea is so relentless that she becomes afraid to leave the house in case a smell, a sound, a passing stranger's lunch, triggers another wave.
Silence is not evidence that the problem doesn't exist. Often, it is evidence of how well women have learned to absorb it.
What gives me hope is seeing more and more women speak openly about their experiences. Every story told is one less person suffering in silence.
And so if I could go back to that conversation with the person from the event, when they said they didn't know anyone who had suffered from pregnancy sickness that badly, I think I would simply say:
"You probably did. You just didn't know."