May 15 - HG Awareness Day

Today is Hyperemesis Gravidarum awareness day. For women like myself who have had HG, it takes what is supposed to be a huge blessing and very happy time and fills it with vomiting, nausea, rapid weight loss, dehydration, malnutrition... I honestly have a hard time even sharing about this, I still gag on certain foods and there are many I cannot even attempt to eat because of how violently I threw them up. Heck, there are still foods from Joey's and Ina's pregnancies that I cannot eat, and they are 3 and 7 years old. There are different "levels" of HG, even from pregnancy to pregnancy with the same woman. I can only hope and pray that if we are blessed with future pregnancies, I do not have HG, or if I do, they're like my easiest pregnancy, Ina's, where I only threw up once or twice daily the entire time. Easy peasy compared to my others! smile emoticon Perspective... Today though I ask you to please pray daily for all of those women who are currently suffering from HG, especially those who are being offered "therapeutic termination" of their pregnancy - which if you look on the HER website, it is a staggering 20% of HG pregnancies that end in abortion. It is one of the saddest things for me having connected with other moms who have HG online, seeing how many women decide to have abortions because the current therapies are not enough to bring mom relief. It is so very, very hard. Even on home health and daily fluids, nausea meds, etc, I still could barely walk around, wash my own hair, or even get up to puke. And thank you, for all of the friends, family, and care providers that were amazing to me during one or all of my pregnancies. I could tag people, but it would be too many smile emoticon heart emoticon My babies may not know it, but they have you to thank you for their lives and I have you to thank for mine, too. You all almost make up for the poor treatment I got from care providers, the doctors who offered me abortion, the times I had to argue with doctors in ERs about needing fluids... being sent back HOME because the doctor wanted to go to lunch before seeing me, when I was super dehydrated and tried to transfer to an OB to get on home health during Emily's pregnancy.... I could go on and on and on. Some of the instances are just too hard for me to think about or even write about. So, please, pray for the women who have HG, pray for the sweet babies who have never made it to earth to take their first breath because of HG (either because of miscarriage, or abortion), pray for the friends and family members of those suffering, and pray for all of the doctors who are researching to find better therapies than currently exist. I'd also like to add that at the end of my pregnancy, I got some relief from a supplement called Lauricidin - Recommended By Physicians Worldwide. After taking it for a week, it was the first time ever I had been pregnant and not also nauseated - in all of my pregnancies. I still threw up some, but it did offer me tremendous relief and I was able to come almost completely off the antinausea meds in the last month of my pregnancy except for after an occasional violent puke. There is some research being done about other pharmaceuticals that may help in pregnancy, but I personally do not feel confident enough from what I've read to share about them yet. If you know someone with HG, call, email, show up and help. It might seem like it is very little or not enough, but if you just show up and help a little every time, it really is huge. Some of the things that helped me most were people dropping lunch off on the porch for my kids, people who came in and folded laundry or did a load of dishes, friends who watched my kids while I got stabbed for the 10th time that day to get an IV in place. It might seem small, but it is not.