A Devoted Husband's Perspective on HG

The HER foundation contributed letters from our forums members for a show that featured Hyperemesis as a topic. The show aired in April of 2007.

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A Devoted Husband's Perspective on HG

Postby PapaHood » Mar 01, 2007 2:30 am

My wife is in her 3rd bout with HG, starting at 5 weeks pregnant and is now at 20 weeks. Her HG has gotten exponentially worse with each pregnancy. HG will definitely test the marriage vows of worse, poorer, sickness, and in some cases, death.
My wife used to be pro-life, before HG. Now, although she would not choose to terminate a pregnancy, she can understand why someone would, and has had feelings of depression, wanting to die, wanting to terminate the pregnancy, and hopes for miscarriage, even though deep down she does not feel that way. This is how disturbingly HG can affect someone mentally.
Before I ever met my wife, she was diagnosed with Endometriosis, and told she would never bear children, so when we discovered this to be untrue, we were ecstatic, but she had what the doctors called "bad morning sickness," which lasted for the entire pregnancy! That was 9 years ago, and obviously we didn't know (nor did the doctors) that this was a mild case of HG...
With our second pregnancy, we got a new doctor, who is very proactive, and Sara was diagnosed with HG fairly early on. She also had a softball-sized cyst on the ovary opposite the baby at 5 weeks pregnant, which required emergency surgery. She and the baby made it through the surgery well, but the battle was just beginning...
The second pregnancy (although still not an extremely severe case of HG) was hard on Sara, and on myself and our (at the time) 5-year-old son, but bearable, until the last couple of months when we got to know the hospital staff by first name, and were told that they had "Sara's room" ready before we got there. Because of frequent trips to the hospital, our doctor did an amniocentesis at 36 weeks, and induced our daughter 4 weeks early, to get the pregnancy "over with," due to the danger that Sara and the baby were in at that time with HG worsening.
Thank God HG babies are so cute! I truly believe that those who survive HG are blessed with cuter, easier kids for the most part. Perhaps this is God evening things out... No pain, no gain, so to speak...
After enough time passed, we seemed to forget how smoothly the last pregnancy went, and decided to do it again! This time I am tempted to videotape all of the horrible parts of the pregnancy if only to remind us of why we will never do this again...
This time, the HG seemed to pick up where it left off with the last pregnancy, like some horrible movie just parked on pause, and at 5 weeks, someone hit 'play.'
Sara was vomiting between 10-30 times per day, with Zofran and Phenergan pills being prescribed and taken like candy! This continued, with my ever-selfless wife force-feeding herself after every trip to the bathroom, so that she and the baby would not starve!
This continued until she literally felt like dying, at about 8 weeks. We took her to the hospital to get a PICC line installed, at the suggestion of many of the women on this website, which I thankfully stumbled across in my mad pursuit for some information regarding this horrible disease, which not many people seem to acknowledge. The doctor told us she would have to stay overnight for monitoring, and she ended up having to stay in the hospital from December 14th, 2006 through January 5th, 2007. Needless to say, the kids really enjoyed Christmas and New Year's at the hospital, and I was forced to play the role of "single parent with a relative in the hospital they have to visit every day while trying to hold down a job, cook, clean, babysit, chauffeur, and sleep." actually, I am kidding about the sleep...
Sara was finally able to come home (PICC line and all) after nearly a month in the hospital, which is wonderful, and saves countless trips to the hospital to visit every day, but now it is all she can do to take our son to school and take care of our 2-year-old daughter (both of which take care of my wife as well) during the day. I still get stuck with the rest after I come home from work. I would trade places with her if I could, even for a day, just to ease her suffering, but am grateful I can't. hehe.
Any husband who said anything close to the traditional wedding vows would do nothing less than I have, and I am definitely not saying it is/was easy, but it is temporary, unlike most diseases. I just try to remember that all we have to do is survive until the baby comes (which we thought was last week, which was week 19, so thank God for tributilene) and everything will get better. Everything, that is, but the realization that I never want to put my wife (who wanted 6 kids) through this agony again. I am sure we will need some kind of grief counseling since we wanted more children, and are making the decision to both get 'snipped' after this pregnancy. If the aforementioned 'pause' button happened again, I can't imagine what the next one would be like for her, and don't want to find out...
So there you have a Husband's perspective on HG. Survival is the only option, and the light at the end of the tunnel thankfully shines bright enough to light the way to birth, and the reward could not be more worth it, which is why these courageous women make the choice sometimes to do this again, and again. Godspeed Heroic Mothers, and keep the bucket handy!
DH of Princesshood
PapaHood
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Postby NoMoreHG » Mar 01, 2007 7:44 am

I suspect my husband can completely relate. Keep up the good work and hang in there! Thanks for being so supportive and for sticking by her side. It means more to her then you will ever know!
HG Survivor Two Times Over
Emily ~ Born Nov. 2002
Luke ~ Born May 2006
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