Blog posts : "morning sickness"

Hyperemesis Gravidarum

There is a lot of misinformation around the Internet surrounding hyperemesis gravidarum. First, let's look at the name, "Hyperemesis" simply relates to excessive vomiting. Hyperemesis is common with flus, food poisoning and so forth. Rarely, it is associated with pregnancy: Gravidarum. It is a fairly rare condition of pregnancy which puts the mother and the baby's life at risk if it is not well managed. 

Some sites say that if you lose 5-10 lbs in the first trimester, this is a sign of HG. Unless you are borderline underweight before you became pregnancy, this is not the case for everyone. We prefer to use percentages of body weight instead: 10-15% of body weight. For a 120 lbs person, that would be 6-12 lbs. 

HG is easy to distinguish between morning sickness, because of the inability to keep anything down without medical intervention. This means all foods, all water, all juices, all drinks, all medications -- everything. 

HG is not very well understood in society, so there's a bit of a stigma that goes with a woman suffering from it. People assume she's milking her morning sickness or playing up her symptoms, when in reality she is not able to hydrate or nourish herself and her body begins to waste away until medical intervention occurs. For me, that meant an IV with 2 L of normal saline and a few shots of gravol. Immediately after, I was started on diclectin which kept vomiting to a minimum, but eating was still a challenge as nothing is appealing. In fact, most things repulse you, but you force yourself to eat anyway and risk the chance of throwing it back up.

There's something.... Interesting about eating and drinking knowing full well that it's just going to force itself back up, anyway. 

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