Pregnant woman suicide HG

[rainbowballoo]

Woman with acute morning sickness hanged herself after reducing meds
mol.im/a/13019563

I've found this story very sad to read.

I suffered from HG twice and felt so alone in it. I found the care around it pretty shocking and had to spend hours waiting in a and e for fluids, when already feeling so unwell. This was the only way to get help when at my lowest.

Together with the guilt of not being able to work and people telling you to ' just eat ginger biscuits'.

The care is not good enough. No one really cares about pregnant women, you have to brave it all.

Midwives and medical professionals often make throwaway comments. The issue is also that you're seen by so many different people and services during your pregnancy. There's not one team or person responsible for your care, you just get passed around and no one really knows what's actually going on with you.

I was also on medication for my entire pregnancy and even getting a new prescription each time was a saga. I also had these kinds of comments made by doctors. I had to justify it right until the end of my pregnancy - why I needed the medication. The only nice person I spoke to was an GP who had suffered herself from HG. She prescribed it, no questions asked and really asked me how I was doing mentally and how I was coping with it all. She was the only person to really ask me and really care about it. I only spoke to her once, unfortunately.

Anyway. We need to do better for pregnant women.

RIP to mother and daughter together forever.

That was so so sad to read. I suffered with HG from weeks 4 to 13 and feel like I am one of the “lucky” ones whose sickness went earlier in the pregnancy. I couldn’t work and had to take sick leave. 24/7 sickness and although I didn’t feel suicidal I can honestly understand why some people choose abortions when going through such horrendous sickness all day every day weeks on end.

My therapist at the time advised me not to go on anti sickness meds because of the whole thalidomide scandal years back but I decided to go on it as I couldn’t cope and found they did help. I woke up the day of my second trimester and sickness completely vanished. My friend however had HG until 2 weeks AFTER her daughter was born and she wasn’t the same person.

So tragic xx

I suffered until the day dd was born. I don’t know that I could have gotten through it without DH. He was absolutely devoted to making my existence as easy as possible that entire time.

The medical system offered very little help. Even the little medication they prescribed was a double-edged sword because it helped with the vomiting but caused horrible, couldn’t sit up level headaches.

This sort of thing is so underplayed by people who have no experience of it. The one that really gets me is people who minimise it by saying, "You're pregnant, not sick". For some people, pregnancy can be the most debilitating sickness of their lives.

Oh my goodness. She must have been in so much pain. The poor woman :(

I agree that the care isn't good enough. I ended up severely anaemic during pregnancy, exacerbated by constant nausea. It was such a struggle to even stand upright for several weeks. When it came to be time for my next appointment, I said I was getting palpitations and could barely move. Midwife said oh that's probably because you're anaemic. My results had come back from my last blood test about two months previously to say I was anaemic but no one had been bothered to tell me!

It was fifteen years ago and I'm still fuming about it. I was also getting suicidal thoughts because of how badly I was struggling and all it would have taken was a quick call and a prescription to sort. They weren't even sorry. I ended up with the distinct impression that any suffering was just hard cheese.

I heard this one a number of times. It's crushing.

You feel like such a failure.

That's awful. I live abroad and we were going to move back to the UK when I found out I was pregnant. We decided to stay (even though we hate it here now and our jobs are miserable) because maternity care here is excellent. I have an obgyn, the same one, throughout my pregnancy. My overall cost for maternity care and birth will only be around 2k, so pretty minimal given I get loads of scans, genetic screening, and a dedicated doctor.

The medical system in the UK truly scares me. The care my sisters got in the UK was like night and day compared to what I get here now. The NHS does not prioritise maternity care at all.

This is so sad.

I've had three HG pregnancies.

1. Late 90s. Abortion on medical grounds. I was so ill I was jaundiced. Nurses had to bathe me as I was too weak to even wash my hair and couldn't get in and out of the bath safely on my own etc.

1. Early 2000s. In and out of hospital like a yo yo. No oral meds worked. One midwife told me positive thinking would help, I just wasn't in the right mindset. 🤬 The sickness passes at about 20 weeks thank fuck. I was judged at work and exiled in favour of a colleague who was pregnant at the same time but who didn't have HG. I was told regularly I looked like a skeleton.

1. 2018. HG again. In and out of hospital but a trio of three strong oral meds in combination did help. But my gp really resenting prescribing them 🤬 and his inadequate care meant return trips to the hospital for drips and IV meds and them sending me home with the right prescriptions all over again. This pregnancy I threw up as I was wheeled out of the C-section room, and my last anti sickness meds whilst holding my new born.

My body is broken from these pregnancies. My teeth are ruined. Dentists have asked me if I've had bulimia. I'm deficient in pretty much everything. I've trauma that resurfaces with every tummy bug I'm right back in that dark place. My weight and my relationship with food have suffered too both very up and down.

HG is AWFUL. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I only have my two babies because of the support I did have, that helped me ignore the negative and feel loved and supported. I can easily see how this situation could end in suicide. 😔 RIP to mum and baby.

That's so unbelievably sad. I have HG (almost at the end) and although I received quite good care I did find it hard to get people to listen to me. Twice my oesophagus tore. I ate so much ginger that ginger makes me vomit now. I feel irrationally angry at the mention of ginger, people just don't get how seriously debilitating it is and think you can fix it with biscuits. 🙄 Morning sickness is bad enough, HG is a serious disease, women used to die from it. 1-3% of pregnancies is a large number suffering women. I've never felt so unheard and not taken seriously. Thank god for my husband.

Wow, just realised how lucky I was with mine.

Gp tried numerous different meds until we found one that worked (ondansatron) and had no issues at all with repeats.

was seen straight away for fluid at the hospital as and when needed.

Only time I had an issue was when one nurse told me I didn't need ondansatron and Prochlorperazine would be fine. I argued the case but she wad having none of it until I was sick all over her shoes.

Even pharmacy was amazing

I did have a colleague tell me to eat ginger biscuits, I was livid as the meds were barely working let alone ginger biscuits. Had an irrational hatred of her and only just forgiven her 4 years later

My husband was ok. But he didn't really understand and especially second time, while also looking after a toddler- it was so hard.

Stress and lack of sleep really exasperate it and I remember having to take my toddler to an and e as she was really unwell and I had no sleep at all and I was probably around 32 weeks pregnant, so quite big and I couldn't stop throwing up at the hospital.

Whenever my husband has a stomach bug I ALWAYS remind him that I felt like that for 18 months.

I had moderate HG from the start, then milder up until six months. In spite of being the only thing keeping me vaguely hydrated, my midwife told me that it was "better to stop" the sickness meds, even though there were no negative effects on the pregnancy.

Very upsetting. I didn't have HG, just standard level nausea and vomiting helped by cyclizine and eating, and even that was bad enough so I really really feel for you ladies who've had it much worse.
I've worked in EPU and saw firsthand the terrible experiences HG ladies were having, which is why now as a GP I am all for prescribing the anti sickness meds to anyone who wants them. We have a sort of helpful software plugin with prompts for current guidelines, medication doses etc, and on the pregnancy section it has the comment 'antiemetics are rarely required for nausea and vomiting in pregnancy', which makes me feel very angry whenever I see it and no doubt is the view shared by many GPs. Absolutely appalling in my view. I hate the way pregnancy is seen as 'normal' therefore we should just get on with it. I quite often get a lady starting to attempt to persuade me to give her antiemetics and the relief when I stop her and say 'which pharmacy shall I send it to?' is obvious!

I had HG. Honestly the constant having to argue with professionals about anti-sickness meds. The amount of times I ended up in hospital on a drip because the hospital had prescribed me both cyclazine and ondanestron to take at the same time just for the GP to refuse to give me either of them.

Literally vomiting 20 plus times a day, constantly nauseous for 9 months straight and constantly being told I wasn't thinking about my baby for just wanting the medication the specialist had prescribed me. Awful awful experience.

I had HG, it was so awful. The only thing that stopped the room violently spinning and me constantly wretching in early pregnancy was lying down and consuming nothing.

Which unfortunately lead to me having a deep vein thrombosis at 12 weeks (it's turns out your body needs liquids and to move or it struggles to keep the blood pumping round), I was hospitalised for weeks, I was so weak I couldn't walk across the room when I got out.

Had one unsympathetic nurse tell me I 'shouldn't have tried to tough it out without medication', excuse me?! I told every bloody medical professional I encountered in the pregnancy how awful it was and not one of them suggested I could have medication, they all just told me it was normal to have some morning sickness and I had to suck it up, basically! Even when I did have the anti nausea drugs they only took the edge off.

And yes. Ginger fucking biscuit suggestions, and my child free sister in law sent me some 'antisickness wrist bands' that did give me some momentary satisfaction as I hurled them in the bin.

My own husband told me 'other women get on with their lives while pregnant' when I couldn't get out of bed in the early weeks (he has since profusely apologised for his ignorance!).

And less than a year after my baby was born my mother was reading about the Princess of Wales having HG and went on about how I was lucky not to get sick like that as if she'd completely forgotten about me ending up hospitalised and barely walking???

It is so dismissed. I remember lying in bed at night googling abortions when this was a much wanted and planned child. So awful for that poor woman.

That's really awful. I'd rather be in physical pain than feel nauseous. To me, it's the worst feeling in the world.
I had really bad sickness with my 3 pregnancies, but nothing that would drive me to that. The poor woman must have been at the end of her tether

That poor woman. I had it in my second pregnancy. Luckily the GP did prescribe meds which dragged me through a month until it settled down.
It was 16yrs ago and still makes me feel so wretched. Horrible illness.

Nausea wipes you out completely, it's just a horrible feeling.

Agreed, it's the absolute pits.

Marry a member of the RF - problem solved.

What a sad read. I think this really highlights how mothers' health is pushed aside for baby.

How awful. I've had two HG pregnancies (DC2 and DC3), the latter being the worst. I had mixed experiences with professionals. My GP was very good and sympathetic while trying lots of different medications. 111 and A&E were terrible. After vomiting over 40 times in 4 hours, including multiple times while waiting to be seen, the doctor merrily informed me that there wasn't "that many ketones" in my urine therefore my "body was coping", despite the high heart rate and looking like utter shit. Other visits and calls for advice were similar.

As a vet, if my patient had vomited that many times and couldn't keep down food or water I wouldn't hesitate to hospitalise them with fluids. Similarly I'm sure if I presented with the same symptoms but wasn't pregnant they wouldn't have dismissed me so quickly.

As PP have said, I wholly understand how women have terminations with HG.

This is a heartbreaking story, as are some of those shared by pp’s and it makes me so angry that something as tragic as this has forced a conversation when women are being forced to endure this every single day.

It’s high time that doctors and midwives realise that the vast majority of mothers-to-be aren’t out for an easy ride or no symptoms at all. Women don’t want to be taking unnecessary medication any more than they want to provide it, but it’s important to remember that women matter just as much as their babies and they shouldn’t be left to struggle like this. If an expectant mother is asking for help it doesn’t mean that they are weak or being soft, it means they bloody well need it and medical professionals need to listen.

I had 2 HG pregnancies and I must have got lucky because the care I got from the hospital was second to none. I was given a regular times slot for fluids I never had to wait in a&e I was treated with respect and very well looked after by midwives on a very busy ward.

I'm so grateful because knowing how I felt , without that support I don't know what I would have done.

RIP to this poor woman

That poor poor woman, this is so incredibly sad 😔. I'm very lucky to have never suffered from sickness in pregnancy (felt nauseas but not actually been sick). I'm not sure I could have any other kids if my 1st pregnancy was like that.