The Loneliness and The Scream

Kirsty McIntyre
Nov 6 · 6 min read

When I found out I was pregnant, I thought I was prepared. I downloaded apps. I went on forums. I read everything I could about the first trimester, about the sickness and the fatigue and the heartburn. With a dramatic air of impending doom, I geared myself up for a few weeks of not feeling my best.

And then it started.

From about five weeks onward, the idea of “morning sickness” was a bitter joke. I felt sick all the time, with no respite and no fluctuation. Every waking hour was taken up fighting a constantly roiling stomach and a pounding, teasing feeling in the back of my throat, like my body could force me to vomit at any given moment. Sometimes it did, with no warning.

On more than one occasion I broke down, telling anyone who’d listen that I couldn’t cope. I didn’t want to do it any more. I’d yell hysterically at my husband when he got frustrated by my inability to fetch myself glasses of water. Nobody understood what it was like.

The only way I could function when I wasn’t flat on my back was by taking a bag of boiled sweets and an orange peel with me. I was drinking, but it led to a battle between my throat and my stomach and my sheer desire to not be sick, so I wasn’t drinking enough. On the worst days I used to sit and stare at the bottles of alcohol in the cabinet and wonder if it would be worth it to get absolutely blind drunk just so I didn’t have to feel so awful.

Instead I lay on the couch every day and waited until it was time for bed, in the vain hope that the next day would be the day it started to get better.

The moment we told our friends, at our wedding reception.

To a lot of people, it probably sounds like on over-exaggeration of a regular pregnancy. Maybe I’m pathetic. Maybe I’m weak. They’re all things that I thought too, every time I talked about how rotten I felt.

I mentioned it to my mum the day the nausea made me late to work. An hour after that conversation I collapsed, vomiting, at a train station on the way into the office.

Two days later my mouth and throat were so dry and raw from bringing up acid I couldn’t swallow. I was rarely passing urine, and when I did it was the colour and consistency of golden syrup. I phoned the doctor, who made a noise I’ve never heard a doctor make when she found out I’d peed twice in 72 hours, and I was sent to the hospital with a cardboard sick bowl. The dehydration meant it took two midwives and a doctor to find a vein they could insert a cannula into.

I spent twenty-four hours hooked up to IV fluids, with a parade of intravenous anti-sickness drugs and blood thinners and cups of tea and, eventually a diagnosis I wasn’t expecting: Hyperemesis Gravidarum.

Hyperemesis Gravidarum is described on the NHS website as featuring “prolonged and severe nausea and vomiting”, which inevitably leads to dehydration and other complications. A lot of people, myself included, disregard the first part unless it leads to the second.

Because I was still in the first trimester, everyone said, it would get better after twelve weeks. Because I’d occasionally be able to eat some mashed potatoes, at least I was able to keep some food down. Because I wasn’t actually vomiting, at least I wasn’t dehydrated. Have you tried ginger biscuits? Or peppermint tea? Or not thinking about it?

I did ask for help. I was prescribed medication by a doctor when I told him, fairly early on, that I couldn’t cope. The tablets made me retch, which in turn made me sick. At one of my appointments, the midwife gave me a hand-wavey answer when I asked how long the nausea would last because it was unbearable.

I tried ginger biscuits, and peppermint tea, and not thinking about it. In the end I struggled through three awful months before I was sick enough to be treated.

Photo by Dominik Martin on Unsplash

After I was discharged from hospital I breezed through the following weeks because I was so delighted I was feeling better and could do things like eat and stand up and go to work.

Then I read this thread by author Lisa Lueddecke about her experiences with HG, and it became apparent that even though I’d stopped being ill, I wasn’t fine.

The idea that pregnancy is a happy process is ingrained. You’re bombarded with pictures of cheerful women talking about how excited they are for their first movement, first heartbeat, first tiny pair of baby socks. During my first scan I watched blankly as a little blob jumped about on the screen, cracking jokes while my husband got teary in the corner. Afterwards I felt absolutely nothing.

At nearly five months pregnant so much of my emotional and mental state has been focused on feeling unwell that it’s left a frightening disconnect between me and the child that social media and articles and common sense tell me I should already adore beyond reason. I am terrified that I’ll give birth to my daughter and feel absolutely nothing towards her.

At least once a week I break down in tears and ask if there’s something wrong with me. What will happen if I don’t love my own daughter? How will I cope with a baby, a toddler, a school-age child that doesn’t feel like mine? On more than one occasion, when I’ve been at my absolute lowest, I’ve seriously considered leaving her with my husband and disappearing somewhere. I’m somewhere between feeling like a terrible mother and not feeling like a mother at all.

People will say “I’m glad you’re feeling better!” and I will agree, but the truth is I’m not. Physically I can eat three meals a day. Mentally I feel like I’m failing every time I look at the scan photograph we’ve stuck to the fridge. I’m failing my husband, who was so thrilled when I told him I was pregnant that he cried. I’m failing both of our families, who are so excited it makes me feel guilty every day.

And worst of all, I feel like I’m failing my daughter, because I can’t find that sonic boom of unconditional love.


I hope that others who experience HG don’t have to get as far as I do before getting the support they need. I hope everyone has access to the same level of care I did. I hope, one day in the future, that this experience is nothing more than an item on the list of things I never want my daughter to have to go through.

Writing this feels like a confession. It’s cathartic and upsetting in equal measure. Before I was hospitalised I didn’t know a single person who’d been in my situation. Now that I’ve started to talk about it, I’m stumbling across more and people who’ve been through the same thing. People who’ve cried for the same reasons I have.

And that’s why I’m talking about it, because sometimes someone needs to start the conversation. Someone who knows it’s more than just being a bit sick. Someone who understands what it’s like.

I see you. I know.

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