Waiting for HG

Gentle, delicate, fragile. Three words which recur in my head. Watchibng myself, treating myself with kid gloves, trying not to break. Even watching telly with my son brings about exhaustion and nausea and I have to retreat to the rocking chair again. "I don't want to go to X's house again, Mummy. I want to stay at home and look after you."

And all the time, the waiting. Waiting either for an end or an escalation. Counting days and hours, which meander by like indifferent fish trapped in a tank. Statistics in my head - the 80% chance that it will get worse. The 10-week date, next week, which is when it got bad last time.

My partner gave me a pep talk earlier this week, when he came home from work to find me in tears again and I told him I was worried about that 80% statistic, that maybe I was kkidding myself with this idea that I'm preventing it with careful management, that a lot of people believe that HG is unstoppable and once your body decides to reject everything that passes your lips, that's it. You're scuppered. No way out. No way in. But then again, some people think you can at least delay the onset through all the things I'm doing. Another woman tells of how she mitigated her second HG pregnancy by doing as I'm doing and eating constantly. She still vomited, but she didn't end up on a drip. And so maybe I am delaying the onset, a though that filled me with despair because it meant the beginning was still to come. But maybe it will end at the same time and I will have shortened the length.

Another thing I said this week, that in a way I wished it would just come and I could just surrender myself to it. Stop fighting, which is so exhausting. I now have to eat all the time. When I'm nbot eating, I'm getting more food. There's no time for anything else. If I get distracted, I pay the price and the nausea, the exhaustion descend on me like a block of black ice. Sudden. Absolute. Debilitating. Not that they aren't there anyway, but I'm getting used to the slow background levels. It's the overwhelming waves which come when I take my eye off the ball. The process itself is exhausting, debilitating. Constantly thinking, what will I eat next. I told him it would be a relief if it came and I couldn't stop it and I could just surrender myself to it, but that even that isn't there for me. Now that I believe I can fight it, I'll never be able to stop fighting. The thought of this lasting another eight weeks, which is likely... when every hour lasts a day...

But he told me, don't be so silly. You've forgotten. What it was like. It wouldn't be any kind of relief. Blood-stained vomit, burning pain in the oesophagus, chunks of stomach lining, pure acid burning everything so all my taste buds disappear, nausea so strong all I could do was lie in bed in the dark and moan, painful stomach from all the retching, hourly, 24 hours a day, weeks at a time.

OK, I don't really want that.

So anyway, I'm settling into some kind of rhythm. In the morning I stay in bed, eating bread, trying not to move, trying to get over the morning hump when the tiniest movement can and sometimes does result in vomit which then ruins the next several hours of the day as I feel a repeat performance waiting around the edge of my throat and I have to keep still, keep eating, very very slowly. Then I watch telly, and eat, and do jigsaws, and eat, and sip at water, and get tired, and cry a bit, and hobble from rocking chair to kitchen to toilet to rocking chair again. Then evening comes and The Daily Dip. I haven't found a way of escaping this yet. No matter what or how often I seem to eat, this moment comes. Where I can't move or talk and eating is suddenly so terribly hard, and I'm so very tired and so very nauseous...

I force down an evening meal and a giant vitamin tablet. It takes ages. And then I go to bed early, just so that I don't have to eat any more. I wake three times during the night, eat a slice of bread slowly, lying on my side in bed, wait a few minutes for it to work, then go and relieve my pathetic bladder. Apart from that though, I sleep. I sleep well.

But I. am. not. vomiting. (hardly).

If only I knew why. Because the eating, the staying still, the hypnotherapy, the rest, are preventing it? Because I simply don't have HG and am not going to get it this time? Because I haven't reached week ten and it just hasn't escalated yet?

I'll never know. Sometimes I feel hopeful. Sometimes I don't.

And now I'm going to bed. Just so I don't have to eat any more. It's probably too late though. In the time it's taken to eat this, I've digested the boiled egg and toast I just ate. I'll have to raid the night-stand loaf.

Night night.