So Your Misses Got Hyperemesis (Gravidarum)

One of the most heartbreaking moments I experienced during the hyperemesis period was when my wife broke down and cried that she just wanted to drink a glass of water.

This was around week 18. By this point, she had not been able to drink almost anything for nearly two months. She cried and told me how much she missed the feeling of cold water going down her throat and quenching her thirst. It was a tough breakdown, and I cried with her. Seeing your wife suffer so much without being able to help is one of the hardest things to experience as a husband.

Since then, my wife has had similar breakdowns every few days. I can’t blame her. Drinking water is such a basic human action that it’s hard to imagine a situation where the ability to perform it is taken away. Hyperemesis took away one of the most fundamental human activities from my wife. It’s incredibly hard.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, dehydration is probably the greatest danger with hyperemesis. Dehydration worsens due to the fluid loss that occurs with vomiting, and since the symptoms of dehydration are similar to those of exhaustion from vomiting, it’s sometimes easy to miss it.

Fortunately, my experience in camping and hiking helped me realize relatively early that dehydration was the greatest danger we faced. This brought the issue to the forefront of our awareness in the early days of hyperemesis, around week 6, and we started looking for solutions to help my wife drink more.

Thus, we began searching for alternatives to drinking water, many of which I detailed in the previous section. For example, for several weeks, most of the fluids my wife consumed came mainly from soup, popsicles, slushies, ice, and nutritional shakes.

But just as with food, the hyperemesis adapted over time and prevented my wife from having the drinks that she could consume. A few days, or at most weeks, after we found a new drink that my wife could tolerate, she would start vomiting it, and we would have to search again.

From around week 12, my wife could hardly drink anything at all. She could only moisten her lips when taking an anti-nausea pill (more about dealing with nausea in here). By this point, we had already been through two hospitalizations. My wife was exhausted from vomiting, nausea, and the relentless battle with drinking. We realized that drinking through her mouth was causing her more suffering than benefit, and it was time to adopt a new strategy.

So we decided that every two days we would go to the clinic near our home so that my wife could receive the fluids she needed through an IV.

This was an extreme decision, but in hindsight, it was the right one for us. Today we also understand that if hyperemesis gravidarum was a more well-known condition, with a more structured treatment protocol, the recommendation for such a routine of IV fluids should have come from a high-risk pregnancy specialist who would have accompanied us through the process.

But that wasn’t the case. The doctor who accompanied our pregnancy didn’t understand hyperemesis. And in the hospital, the doctors mainly treated the symptoms of dehydration and nausea without a strategy beyond stopping the current dehydration.

These are things that may not be pleasant to say about the doctors, since they treated us well and were professional and sensitive. But it’s important to say this because it’s something very crucial to understand—modern medicine still does not know how to strategically deal with hyperemesis gravidarum. This is the situation in our place of residence, and I believe it’s the same in your place of residence.

Therefore, you need to accept the fact that the treatment of hyperemesis gravidarum is problematic, you need to be aware of your wife’s condition, and you need to be able to make a tough decision—if your wife cannot drink, you must start going to receive IV fluids regularly. She needs fluids for her health and the baby’s health.

The thought of entering a new routine of IVs and injections was very unpleasant for my wife, who suffers from post-trauma and one of her triggers was injections. But in the end, the decision to give her fluids through regular IVs probably saved her life and our baby’s life.

If your wife also suffers from hyperemesis gravidarum, there’s a good chance she will need regular IV fluids. The next chapter will be dedicated to this topic. Read it carefully, as it might save your wife’s life too