Dr Kate Womersley relives the horror of having hyperemesis gravidarum – which affects up to 14,000 women a year in the UK – and finds new hope for mothers of the future
My “morning sickness” started in the evening. That was the first clue the antenatal guides and obstetric textbooks were not telling women the whole truth. When the nausea lasted all day, and then for 245 days, that was the second clue. If I’d known then that I would feel sick until my baby was born, I’m not sure I would have braved pregnancy at all.
A fortnight after I saw those two pink lines, I started to feel unwell. Blaming a rushed dinner after getting home late from the hospital – I was a junior doctor at the time, and still am – a tightness lodged itself where my bottom ribs meet my stomach. By morning, I felt hungover, though I hadn’t touched alcohol in weeks. At a patient’s bedside, I suddenly tasted something sour. I ran to the ward sluice. Holding my hair back from my face, I cried out in shock at how violently I was sick. Food and then acid and then air. Leaning against the wall, my knees fizzing, I wiped my mouth with a paper towel that absorbed almost nothing. It was the last time I would be at work for more than two months.
