DH struggling to cope with my pregnancy sickness

[LilacWine7]

I was diagnosed with severe form of pregnancy sickness 3 months ago and it hasn't improved much. I've tried medications and every alternative remedy out there but most days i still vomit several times and some days I vomit 10x or more. In between I feel nauseous though have started to have a few hours a day when the nausea lifts.

DH was very patient at first but now he is fed-up and frustrated. He complains we have no social life, no sex life and he feels neglected. I've explained I can't get in the mood for sex when I feel sick (we've only had sex 4x since I got pregnant) and I hate leaving the house unless essential as I hate being sick in public. Friends visit us at home but i find it tiring, and when we have overnight guests he ends up doing most of entertaining. Ive managed to go back to work part-time but often take days off sick when i'm vomiting a lot (its a very physical client-centred job). He thinks I should force myself to go in every day as its a new role and I need to make good impression.

Most of time he's very caring, does all the food shopping, helps with meal prep etc. Other days he gets angry and says I need to make more effort with our relationship, try harder to go to work and get out of house more. He thinks fresh air and eating something every hour will help, but sometimes nothing helps and he doesn't understand I can't eat regularly at work. He nags me to eat all the time as he's worried the baby might not get enough nutrients.

How can i improve our relationship and help him to be less impatient? I know its hard for him but I don't have much energy. I can't watch movies with him either (TV triggers sickness) and when I feel ill i just want to curl up by myself. How do i stop him feeling neglected and ignored? I know he's stressed and worried, but how do i reassure him? He says my mood-swings are horrendous.

Why is he googling HG stats?

lilac have a look at the HG thread on mumsnet here

HG -is- hard for people to understand who haven't experienced severe, debilitating illness. From what you say your husband is doing his best even if FGS he needs to get a fricking grip. (for contrast my husband dind't get any sex during the 2nd preg and hasn't had any in the 11 months since because I was too scared of contraception failing again, until I could get sterilized. He hasn't complained once).

Maybe he will gain some help from looking on the Dads Area on the HELP HER forums, for people whose partners are enduring HG here.

also for partners and friends on the HELP HER forums partners and friends

As absolutely everyone has said, your husband needs to back off. His suggestions of fresh air, 'just eat' and worse, that he needs sex are not helping.

In practical terms with HG - get some meds. Seriously, cyclizine is ultra-safe; metoclopramide, prochlorperazine and promethazine are safe and ondansetron is the most effective anti-nauseant and safe (huge Danish study about that).

Rest. Rest. Rest. Rest. Get sicknotes for work if you possibly can. You are protected in law (mind you that doesn't always work in small companies, but if you are in a big one you should be ok). Over-stressing yoruself makes you worse with HG.

Don't feel bad about this. Many people who haven't had it make others feel bad, but it's a serious and sometimes life-threatening illness. It's not psychological as some out of date people will have you believe. It's rooted in a response to the HcG hormone, though the full mechanism isn't understood

Please point your husband to those links. Sex may be important to him but there are times when long term self control is needed and this is one of them.

Poor you.

What about "for better and for worse, in sickness and in health...." did that mean nothing to him?

Hope he bucks up

HG -is- hard for people to understand who haven't experienced severe, debilitating illness.

It's not really, is it?

It's pretty easy to understand that puking 10 times a day for weeks on end is not very nice and that it won't leave you in the humour for housework.

OP, I'm slightly amused that you came back to defend your husband and made him sound even worse than before.

He thinks he gets to tell you how to spend your sick leave?

You really are in for a shit time with this wanker when you are on maternity leave and he thinks that's his ticket back to the 1950s.

I had HG for 9 months. DH had to do the school runs as I couldn't lift my head most days, cook all the meals, do all the house work, no sex for 9 months. I barely had the energy to even talk and he did have to become my carer for the most part as I could barely function or look after the kids and ended up depressed spending most days crying in a ball or in the toilet or on a drip.

I am sure it was really difficult for him. But he never once made me feel bad for it or moaned at me. I could see him sometimes getting stressed but never at me, or at least he never showed it. Our life did change a lot because of it, but that wasn't my fault and it isn't yours either.

I hope it goes away for you soon. You have my deepest sympathy

He is selfish, critical and controlling. And, OP, seems to have made you believe that his feelings, wants and needs are more important than yours. This is raising some red flags for me. Look up signs of emotional abuse and see how many sound familiar. If he's as bad as he sounds, you'll need to LTB. If he has redeeming features, maybe counselling will help him to realise he has the wrong attitude. But something (maybe the fact that he's moaning about FEELING NEGLECTED and LACK OF SEX when you're vomiting 10 times a day) tells me that might not happen.
I don't say LTB lightly. Especially not when you're pregnant with his child. But this man is being a selfish fucking bastard.

Oh God, if it's like this now, it will get so much worse when the baby arrives. You won't be able to get out just now, perhaps, but you will need to get away from this horrible man soon. Start planning.

my ex once complained that me being nauseous, exhausted and unable to sit up without feeling extremely ill was hard for him. I think his ears rang for a week after I tried to put him right on that score. he was the fucker who moaned that I was being miserable during my miscarriage. he definitely moaned about me being miserable several times when Iwas unwell and had made an effort to get up and cook/look after children.

oops sorry...

I hope yours gets better... does not bode well at the moment with an attitude like that.

hoping your symptoms ease soon.

he is struggling to cope with your sickness?!?!?!?! I've only read the title of your thread and I already think he's a complete dick.

Bold fail. Have now read the thread and he sounds worse than I predicted. He also seems to have convinced you that his feelings are more important than yours. They are not.

I had a phase of being sick for a while with my second pregnancy but nothing on this scale. It does drag you down and the last thing I'd want was DH bossing me around or winding me up. Please don't feel guilty at expressing irritation when he tries to minimise the ongoing effort just to function at a basic level.

I assumed reading the title that you had 2 other kids that dh was having to manage singlehandedly as well as work. My dh found it difficult dealing with dd1 basically on his own when I was ill with dd2.

But if it's just that he's a bit bored and wants a shag then he needs to grow up.

This "man" needs some of his male relatives to have a chat, possibly using secateurs.

This is not how adults behave. DW and I were lucky with the pregnancy, but I still treated her like a Faberge egg. DB4 and SIL had an awful perinatal time, over a year, with SPD, low birth weight and failure to thrive. DB told me he was like a West Indies wicket by the end of it.

The man's a cunt.

I understand you want to see him in the best light, but he's not trying to help you at all. Telling you to eat, trying to get you to have sex, telling you to go to work, and that you should be doing all housework. This is not the behaviour of a man who has any concern for his partner, it is selfish, bullying and actually quite worrying. It does not bode well for your relationship post-baby.

Why are you trying so hard to 'understand' him (and his childish 'me, me, me' strop), when he's trying so little to understand you (and your very real and unpleasant condition)?

bathtime if you really think that it's not easy to understand HG, I'm afraid you're wrong. I really, really wish you weren't.

When you have HG an awful lot of people -most- think it's just morning sickness. It's not. It's got the same relation to normal morning sickness that pneumonia has to a cold and sometimes it's as lethal as pneumonia.

most people don't get that. If they've had a cold for a few days, it's miserable but they think that's it.

Trust anyone who's had HG, the number of people who say "oh it'll all be alright by week 12" or "just try eating something" or "go out for a walk" or "lying in bed isnt helping" are immense. It really makes things far worse becuase it ends up isolating you, you feel like you're making a fuss about nothing and other people are (unintentionally) quite cruel. And there's a lot people say this shit.

Also telling her to leave him really isn't helpful. The OP has HG and is severely debilitated. The last thing she can do is throw him out or end the relationship because she is too ill.

If you are unable to see that, you really don't get HG at all. it leaves you weak and unable to stand up sometimes. You can't, you simply can't, tell someone who actually Most of time he's very caring, does all the food shopping, helps with meal prep etc to leave. She needs him. You can't go shopping for yourself when you're like this. Ideas that she could do this independently are pie in the sky. If she had to go independently, she would NEED the help of family and friends. Intense, day in day out help just to survive.

Meerka - those comments are understandable coming from people who are not living with someone with HG. If you're implying that these comments are from people living with a sufferer then the real problem is that they are imbeciles.

I agree that it's not possible to leave a relationship while you're in the grip of it, but the posters suggesting it are correct that this relationship is doomed if the husband does not have a personality transplant in the near future.

Agreed he really needs to shape up and get a clue, very very fast.

Apart from anything else, it takes TIME to recover from HG after the birth and you have to cope with a newborn as well as your own physical weakness. He's going to have to man up fast.

I don't think he's approaching this the right way at all. The OP did also say - and reiterated it- that he's caring a lot of the time and does do quite a lot in the house. He doesn't sound all bad. Just like he's oblivious - like most people who haven't gone through it. Seems to me it's better to work on educating him than on throwing him out, education for both the current reality and for the reality of living with a newborn.

I think the OP needs to look at a specialist HG forum really to get appropriate support.

And medication.

He doesn't sound all bad. Just like he's oblivious - like most people who haven't gone through it.

It is "all bad" to be oblivious to serious illness in your spouse.

The fact that lots of people are clueless about HG does not at all excuse or explain away this level of hectoring and domineering from the partner of a sufferer.

And no, she doesn't need him.

She needs someone who is actually capable of helping her. Ideally someone who sees her as a person and not a malfunctioning incubator.

OP - if you are reading, please, please tell someone who loves you about what is going on at home.

Your mother?

If you were my daughter I'd want to know you were in such a vulnerable position with a man who thought it was his job to tell you to do the housework when you were suffering from a serious illness.

Tell him to feck off