My First Pregnancy - First HG Experience

My first pregnancy, just like this new pregnancy was a huge surprise. I was totally shocked. We had only been married for four months. I remember the moment so clearly. We were watching movies at home alone on New Year’s Eve. We were watching the movie “9 Months.” There is a scene in the movie where she is describing all of her first trimester symptoms and all of a sudden it was like she was reading a checklist of my physical symptoms. My mind started screaming “NO FREAKING WAY” while at the same time I knew in my heart that it was so true. I went right to the store and got 5 different pregnancy tests. First, positive, “well that can’t be right.” Second, positive, “no freaking way am I pregnant.” Third, fourth, fifth…you get the picture.

Shortly into my first trimester the horrible nausea and vomiting started. I was sick day and night; I would wake up and run straight for the bathroom to be sick. This was the cause of one of the biggest arguments that we had in the beginning of our marriages. My husband would leave his huge shoes right at the end of the bed and every night on my run for the porcelain I would break a toe on the freaking shoes. After about half a million times of asking him to put them in the darn closet, on my return trip to get back in the bed I placed the big heavy shoes right on his sleeping face. Voila, no more shoes in the middle of the floor. J Some problems are best solved with an object lesson.

I can remember driving down the road or being on the highway and having to stop on the side of the road to be sick. Super humiliating to be at your weakest human moment on the side of I-75, not my best moment, would love to see that as a picture on a greeting card sometime.  I went to the hospital for hydration on more than one occasion this is the period that I learned I am a hard stick for starting IVs.  My veins roll and hide and the nurse stuck me about six times before I told her she had one more chance and then I was going to put that needle …well you get the picture.

Food smell, the smell of cooking food, raw food, and well any food made me totally out of my mind sick. My husband didn’t know how to cook, and he learned to cook out of necessity.  I would lie on the couch, blankets over my head to block the smell and yell directions to him in the kitchen. That is actually one of the funniest memories I have of this period. My sweet OB and Midwife were concerned I was rapidly losing weight, by my fifth month I was wearing two sizes smaller than when I got pregnant. I had no belly at all and they were concerned. I am allergic to phenergan so they put me on some other medicine, no Zofran at that time. I cannot remember the name but I totally remember the effects. The medicine made me paranoid and my skin felt like it was falling off my body. I can remember sitting on the stairs in our apartment rocking back and forth saying I just wanted to die. Without the medicine I was sick, with the medicine I was a total nut case. Neither seemed like a good option. Finally I just stopped the medicine. Oh the advice I got for ways to “help.” Crackers, ginger, ginger ale, sprite, get out of bed slowly, eat crackers in bed and get out of bed slowly, eat small meals, and on and on and on. In my head I was thinking, “I can’t even keep water down, and if I get out of bed any slower a sloth will be faster than I am.” Sweet well meaning souls, when someone has HG, there are few if any “traditional” remedies that help this nightmare.

Around my sixth month all the nausea stopped. I started to gain weight and actually looked like I was pregnant. Things were great till I went into pre-term labor, then preeclampsia. I guess you can see I don’t do anything half way. At the end of the pregnancy I had a beautiful healthy baby and I was content with that, he had colic for the first four months, but after the nightmare I lived through I figured that was par for the course. I told my husband, no freaking way am I EVER getting pregnant again. Enjoy this kid cause you don’t get another. Hilarious now, not so hilarious then, but the journey was so difficult. In the end I made it through and was able to say I survived. I was never actually diagnosed with HG. I had the most caring OB and midwife and so I don’t think it was carelessness but more a lack of information at the time. They made every effort to help me and make me comfortable, but there was even less information then and that was just in 2000.

My First Baby - He is almost 11