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The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/sfish27 on 2023-09-04 18:21:07.

Hi everyone! I got pregnant in May and have hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), but I didn’t get diagnosed and properly treated until late July because my three sources of information were:

  • Doctor: "this is morning sickness, here is one anti-sickness pill. Every time you call me we will swap pills and try one different pill."
  • Midwife: "ask your doctor"
  • Pregnancy sickness support: “here are 2 incredibly long emails full of very useful information but which you are WAYYYYYY too dehydrated to understand right now”

It frustrated me no end that I spent eight weeks crying, rocking, throwing up and losing weight before anyone considered I might have HG and offered me proportionate help. So as a PSA here is what I learned (note - I am in the UK so take this with some context if you are elsewhere):

  1. If you keep on Googling ‘morning sickness is this normal’ every other day, etc. then it doesn’t matter whether it’s normal or not as you need help regardless.
  2. You don’t have to be throwing up constantly to have hyperemesis. You can have dry HG which is mostly nausea.
  3. The best diagnostic tool I found was the chart on this page:
  4. If your sickness is severe, take your anti-sickness medication REGULARLY. I am now on 3 different medications and I take them religiously. I needed a consistent level within me for it to make a difference - ‘as and when’ does no good for HG at all (as the hospital nurse confirmed).
  5. Don’t insist on sticking to normal mealtimes or numbers of meals. Eat whatever whenever and don’t worry about seeming rude by not eating when others do. You can also make your earlier meals bigger and your later meals smaller. I found dinner hardest so that became my smallest meal.
  6. You cannot eat a low-sugar diet if you aren’t actually eating. Get some sugar in you. My first sugary drink turned things around very fast. Lemonade and jelly got me through.
  7. My doctor didn’t send me to the hospital for rehydration because ‘you don’t want to go to hospital’, i.e. going to hospital is generally a thing to be avoided. If you are severely dehydrated you DO want to go to hospital. All it meant was I ended up going 3 weeks’ later for 3 times as long.

I’m no medical professional but hopefully this will help someone identify their HG and get it under control faster than I got mine.