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.

So sad. I had a friend who told me "it was all in the mind". No it really isn't.

It’s such a sad story to read, I too had HG twice but I was lucky that I was believed and got the help I needed from the GP and hospital, but even with the meds I was so exhausted I couldn’t get out of bed or wash for weeks. I remember after I gave birth and I was finally able to eat I was crying tears of joy over a cheese sandwich. I haven’t gone on to have a third child because I couldn’t put myself or my family through it again.

@mumset - trigger warning please

I've not read this but it would absolutely crush me.
I've had hg 3 times and unless you've had experienced it I dont think you'll ever get it. It's so sad that poor woman felt suicide was her option.
I was offered a termination with one of my pregnancies because the medication didn't work orally so I just went into hospital for iv meds and fluids until about 7 months until I could have them orally.
Oh my heart, may that poor woman rest peacefully and may pregnant women one day be taken seriously with illnesses. 💔

Poor, poor woman and her little baby. So devastating for the whole family.

I'm currently sat waiting to be admitted to the gynecology Unit from the Early pregnancy unit as I'm so dehydrated and can't stop bring sick. Second HG pregnancy, made so much worse by the fact that I have a toddler at home.

In my first pregnancy, during one of my many hospital admissions, when I said I don't think I could carry on with the pregnancy the doctor said to me "be positive. Look at Princess Kate, she did it". Yes, I'm sure Princess Kate didn't have to wait in a hospital waiting room throwing up blood for 9 hours to be told to be positive and "have you tried sipping water and nibbling crackers".

I was lied and gaslit by midwives until I was blue lighted to hospital having had a seizure due to dehydration. I then got the care I needed due to one awesome woman consultant who's sister also had HG.
Women are treated like shit, pregnant women doubly so. Poor poor Jessica, I am so sorry this happened to you.

HG both pregnancies, ondansetron was the only thing that saved me alongside frequent visits to hospital for rehydration on a drip as even the slightest movements, such as turning my head or swallowing my own saliva sent me into a vomiting frenzy that meant heaving until I turned blue and couldn’t breathe. Like others, I tore my oesophagus and had multiple fillings post pregnancies.
First time around my male GP announced that he had never heard of pregnancy sickness lasting beyond 12 weeks before and I should persevere. The second time I around I took no shit and demanded soluble ondansetron as I could keep the pill form down long enough for it to have any effect. Even then, it just took the edge off enough for me to function.
HG is still minimised and misunderstood, especially the damage not just on physical but on mental health and I can absolutely see why this poor lady felt in utter despair because of it.

That's absolutely horrendous, that poor woman and her family. Really hard to read 

@Ploddingalong679 hope you're not waiting too much longer to be seen. Thinking of you x

Ladies, I think those of you who have had HG would maybe find it therapeutic to write down your experiences when you're at peace with it. If anyone wants to share your story and we can have an awareness thread so people can hear how awful it is? Poor Jessica, that beautiful young woman, I actually feel crushed. She's looks like such a nice person. If her family do a go fund me or anything else charity based can someone tag me? I don't use Social media anymore.

I had HG with my third, I would never have had a second baby if I'd had it with my first. Morning sickness was bad enough but hell fire, HG is in a different universe. I was only listened to after I passed out and banged my head on a fireplace and then a marble hearth. I was blue lighted to a and e and only then was I put on cyclizine which was next to useless. I was constantly in and out of hospital on drips to rehydrate me.
It's absolutely disgusting that women are treated badly with hg. If you're vomiting 30+ times a day, there's definitely an issue and shouldn't be told otherwise.

That is tragic and outrageous in equal measure - it should never, ever have got to that point. It makes me so angry. I’m bloody certain that if men carried and birthed the babies then all stages of maternity care would be a damn sight better.

My experience of HG sounds almost identical to other posters - I can’t look at a ginger biscuit or smell mint tea without heaving, and it’s 16 years later. Even the smell of water made me start retching, so bathing or drinking
it were out of the question.

I also felt so isolated and alone. DM was upset
that I wasn’t excited and looking forward to the baby, but in my mind there wasn’t going to be a baby - I was going to die and take the baby with me. I was quite certain of it.

When I collapsed at home, I can remember my head hitting the floor at the top of the stairs and thinking “Thank god it’s finally over”. And I was right, my DD and I would have died without emergency medical care and ongoing treatment.

Two comments from GPs stick in my mind particularly (aside from all of usual, unhelpful ‘advice’). One middle-aged female doctor sneered at me contemptuously and said “What exactly did you expect?! This is what pregnancy is like!”

Another male GP advised me to go to the local chip shop and ask for one of their empty large pickled egg or pickled onion jars - because then I could “carry it round with me everywhere while I was out and about, to be sick in, and the screw top means nobody will be bothered by the smell”. Completely missing the point that I was too weak and ill be going anywhere at all - was practically carried into the appointment by my lovey DF - and could no more have trotted into the chip shop for a nice chat than I could have grown wings and flown. Absolute clown.

I don’t think most people have a clue about HG, because unless you’ve experienced it, you wouldn’t actually believe how brutal and dangerous it really is. I wouldn’t have, until it happened to me. But ‘trained medical professionals’ really should do much, much better.

I have found my people, who finally understand what it's like!
I was sick for the whole nine months x 3. I kept sick bags everywhere to throw up in. I had a bowl under my bed because I used to wake up in the night and be sick. I remember one of then I was being sick about every 15 minutes for a while. As soon as my stomach had produced enough bile, it would come up. I don't think I was as sick as some of you though.

I wish you were my GP @HiCandles !

I was vomiting around every 10 minutes. I lost tons of weight (was only a size 8 to start with) and it hurt to sit down / lie down / lean against anything as my bones were sticking out. My GP said they could maybe give me drugs but they couldn’t guarantee that the drugs wouldn’t harm my baby. One GP said “I mean, maybe your baby would be ok, some people have heroin and their babies are ok”. Which made me think that the drugs were as risky as heroin. So of course I didn’t take any. Most miserable 9 months of my life. And also the reason my daughter is an only child.

like a previous poster, I had to go to the dentist immediately after giving birth as my teeth were so wrecked from all of the stomach acid.

Me too. Only one child as I couldn’t go through it again. Sickness started at 5 weeks. When I finally got to hospital (after the usual guff about ginger and crackers) I collapsed. After a few days on a drip I was sent home with meds which quickly stopped working and then the GP refused to give me more. I made another appt for a second opinion (it was that or go back to hospital) and that’s when a wonderful doctor at the same practice took one look at me as I broke down in tears, exhausted and depressed in his surgery and gave me meds which made the pregnancy bearable. I still can’t abide the smell of soap or the wool carpet (was next to my head as I threw up) and now live in fear of being sick. I’m paranoid about food poisoning and germs which could make me sick. It was a truly awful experience.

I had HG right up to the day before DD was born. It definitely got better after say week 25!ish but weeks 6-13 were horrific. Medication didn’t help me either :( as I threw it straight back up. I barely worked during my pregnancy.

RIP.
Unlike the rest of you brave ladies here I don't have kids yet (TTC) but the amount of horror stories are shocking. It's really putting me off having children in this country. Women are never taken seriously especially pregnancy illness people say 'X could do it why can't you?'
The doctors who laughed at her have blood on their hands. Seriously. I don't care how understaffed the NHS is you don't treat people like that.

And as a PP said treatments appeared for Princess Kate, the rest of us mere mortals just aren't worthy of the same consideration.

And people wonder why women don't want to have more children, cost aside! Or even any children at all. Traumatic birth experiences are a big factor.

That is a shocking comment, no wonder you were put off. It's also untrue, there are safe antiemetics to try before getting into the realms of having to worry about problems.
I am so sorry for you and all the other women who have had such terrible care from the medical professionals who are supposed to help them.

I had sickness up until delivery. Begged the doctor for meds but because baby was growing fine they wouldn't give me anything. I was so nauseous I couldn't drive or be driven without triggering even worse sickness. At the peak, even walking would set me off. So I just vegetated at home for 9 months. Becoming increasingly immobile from lack of exercise and muscle deconditioning, which exacerbated pelvic girdle pain and sciatica. I was so isolated and ill.

I needed months of physio after birth to get remotely back to my normal self and I'm still not 100% right. Had I not spent 9 months trying not to move, I really don't I would have ended up in such a dreadful physical condition. It was absolutely awful.

RIP to this poor woman :(

Gosh, this is so upsetting, that poor, poor woman.
I had HG in my most recent pregnancy and it was absolutely horrendous. I was signed off for a few months and tried several drugs before being prescribed Xonvea. My GPs were amazing but the effects of the illness were brutal. I felt very close to terminating the pregnancy and was completely unable to parent my DD at the time.
I was supported by an amazing lady via the Pregnancy Sickness Support charity who had gone through HG herself and texted me every day. It really made me feel less alone when no one around me understood what I was going through. If you are reading this thread and are suffering then please reach out to that charity.

I had HG 15 years ago. I wasn't 'allowed' anti-sickness medication unless I was in hospital on a drip (which I was a few times).

I was sick all day every day and was gifted a hiatus hernia, the loss of a tooth and at one point an eye full of burst blood vessels.

Mostly people called it 'morning sickness' and told me to try travel sickness wristbands.

I was sick in both an a&e dr and a traffic warden.

HG is 90% of the reason that I only have one child.

For what? It says it right in the title. If you don't want to know any further, don't open the thread.

I had this and it was horrific but I did feel supported whilst I was pregnant. But the second I had the baby? Nothing. I begged for mental health support but they said unless I was going to hurt my child they couldn’t help me. I suffered for years, alone, and no one cared. I was made to push too early and too long in labour and I’ve got long term damage and again, no one cares. I’ll just have to live with the fact that I will be wetting myself for the rest of my life.

The way we treat women in this country is utterly disgusting. We think female health is a joke and it’s utterly horrific.

This story is awful, truly awful. We need to support women better. We treat them like shit.

I remember a nice NHS Direct call handler giving me a polite telling off as I was managing to keep down the odd ice cube and assumed that would be OK (I wasn't thinking right at that point). She sent me to the GP straight away.

Ah, devastating

I am childfree by choice, and conditions like HG weren’t really a factor when I first started thinking about my future as an adult female but I sure as hell wouldn’t have been happy about your “common or garden” morning sickness.

But I remember thinking that when there were all the stories about the Princess of Wales having HG, that the way it was treated might change. Oh, silly old bear, eh?!?!

I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was 18, and even though my symptoms haven’t been as severe as some people I know, the consultant said “Come back when you want to get pregnant, you’ll likely struggle to have kids.” And he walked away. No reference to the other issues with menstruation, moods, and the like. Even back then - in 1993/4, I was pretty shocked.

like a number of PP’s have said “If it was a male condition … …”

I suffered from week 5 of pregnancy until I gave birth and actually weighed less at 9 months pregnant than I did before I got pregnant. I can completely understand why some women end their pregnancies as they cant continue suffering.

I was lucky in that my mental health didnt suffer - mainly as this was DC3 and I had severe morning sickness with the previous 2 so I knew i would suffer again (it was so much worse for DC3 than the others as I didnt get HG with them) but I was so desperate for another baby that I dedixced I would have to grit my teeth and I knew it would dissappear as son as i gave birth. DC1&2 were also a lot older so I didnt have to do any running around for them so was able to just do what I wanted when not at work.

I found no one understood how different HG is to morning sickness and dismissed my suffering constantly. It is a really misunderstood area of pregnancy and that needs to change.