So Your Misses Got Hyperemesis (Gravidarum)

Many of the people around you will hear about the difficult pregnancy you’re going through and will want to help. Despite their good intentions, most do not understand the complexity of the situation you’re facing. When you tell them that your partner is struggling to drink, you’re likely to hear a lot of advice: she must try harder, she has to think about the baby, she shouldn’t give up, she should try drinking ice water, or she should try eating watermelon, and so on.

These are well-meaning suggestions, but most of them are irrelevant. Giving advice like, “Don’t give up on yourself, just drink,” to a woman with hyperemesis gravidarum is like telling an athlete with a broken leg not to give up and to keep running – it’s physically impossible.

The one piece of advice I wish someone had given us is this:

If your partner has hyperemesis gravidarum and is struggling to drink, there’s a high chance she will need regular IV fluids to prevent dehydration. You need to prepare for this possibility – both medically and emotionally.

Don’t get me wrong. I really hope that this chapter won’t be relevant to you. If your partner has HG, I wish for it to be mild, to pass by the end of the first trimester, and that despite the difficulties, she’ll be able to drink. We met many women whose experience with HG was just that. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was manageable.

Our experience was different, involving severe hyperemesis. During the pregnancy, we also met many other women who suffered from an HG experience just as severe as my wife’s, sometimes even worse. For my wife and for those women, the only way to get fluids into their bodies during pregnancy was through regular IV fluids several times a week.

This chapter is dedicated to the topic of IV fluids and hyperemesis gravidarum. Its goal is to help you understand whether your partner needs an IV, whether those IVs should be as routine as they were for us, and if so, how to manage them properly.

We’ll start with the signs that will help you recognize whether your partner needs IV fluids from your local hospital or clinic. Read this section carefully, because early detection can save your partner’s life and the life of your baby.

From there, we will describe the process we went through in hospitals and during stays, until we formulated a plan that helped us manage several months with IVs as the main source of fluids. I believe our experience represents what many couples go through. The goal of sharing our experience is to provide you with perspective and food for thought, which will help you determine whether you too need regular IV fluids as a primary source of hydration.

After that, I’ll present some additional important insights we’ve gathered, including tips that will help you navigate the challenging situation where your partner can’t drink and is therefore dependent on regular IV fluids.