Recap: Weeks 1-20

I didn't keep a journal while I was pregnant because I didn't feel like I had anything to write down. I mean, who wants to write "vomited 5 times today" or "couldn't even keep water down" every day for fifteen weeks? Now though, I kind of wish I had so I could see exactly how the HG progressed at different stages. I decided to go ahead and write it all down while I still remember most of it. So here goes the recap of how it all came down (or up in my case!).

Week 5: Found out we were pregnant...yay!

Week 6: Queasiness hit on Day 1 and lasted all week. Up until then, hadn't experienced it at all. Thought...hmmm, maybe this is what morning sickness is like (read: 1st degree nausea).

Week 7: Day 1 brought 7 episodes of vomiting starting around 6am. Lucky me was in a car all day from St. Louis to Texas returning from a family reunion. I have such a sweet family! They put up with my vomiting the whole way. Day 2-7 brought even more vomiting, although I don't think I hit 7 times in one day again.

Week 8: Called the doctor's office to let them know I couldn't keep anything down. They called in Phenegran for me. It reduced the number of times I vomited slightly, but it also made my stomach hurt really badly.

Week 9 & 10: Missed quite a bit of work. In fact, work said I had to have the doctor write a note saying I could go back to work. Decided to change my schedule to just one day a week until I knew I could reliably show up for my shifts to prevent the company from having to take any sort of disciplinary action. (Fortunately, I had wonderful, supportive bosses, but they were still required to maintain a certain attendance percentage for their employees.)

Week 10: Day 7 (Saturday) I just couldn't deal with not being able to keep anything down any more, so we called the dr's office. The answering service paged the doctor and he called the hospital for a pre-admit and had me stay overnight for IV hydration.

Week 11: Day 1 - left the hospital after one night. Thought about begging to stay a second night because the IV hydration had helped so much. Day 2 & 3 were some of the best I had had in a looong time. Felt so much better. Day 4 it all started going downhill again (...up in my case I guess - sorry, couldn't resist saying that again). I did get to have a sonogram that week, which was nice. Our little bean measured all of one inch then. He was waving his little arms during the sonogram - either signing or drumming...or both! It was so cute to see.


Week 12-14: Ugg, ugg, ugg. I was in bed by 9pm and couldn't hardly get out until after noon the next day. 6-10pm was my peak time, when I could pretend I just had 1st degree nausea and function a bit more normally.

Week 13: Days 1- 6 I only left the house for my one four hour shift - could not do any of the other pre-Thanksgiving errands I had on my list. Because it was the end of the first trimester, I had thought I would be feeling better (as everyone had promised me), so I had bid for hours on both Saturday (Day 7) and Sunday (Week 14, Day 1). Big mistake! I barely made it through the weekend.

Week 14: I knew something was wrong - this wasn't regular morning sickness - so I did a bit of research before my ob appointment. I had vaguely remembered the ob saying something about hyperemesis when I was at the hospital at 10 weeks and decided to google hyperemesis. I came across the wonderful site hyperemesis.org (also known as helpher.org) and found an amazing checklist of things you might be concerned about if you have hyperemesis. Of about twenty items, I checked "yes" to almost all of them. This was a huge turning point for me. I wasn't going crazy after all. My concerns were founded on something other than first time mother worry. And I had something solid regarding treatment to discuss with the ob.

Week 15: Had another ob's appointment. He told me to come back in a month and I would have gained ten pounds. This time, that didn't fly. As a result of my research from the previous week, I was able to ask for more aggressive treatment and get hooked up with a portable IV pump through Matria (home health care) on Day 3.

Week 16: Got to speak with a WONDERFUL nutritionist on staff at Matria. She was the first person to understand that I couldn't keep saltines and ginger ale down. In fact, she was even able to explain that the saliva production required to digest the saltines was probably triggering the hyperemetic episodes. She suggested little peach and pear fruit cups as they are fairly easy to digest. This was a huge turning point for me! I think I had fifteen of those the first twenty-four hours - I felt like I had been starving and finally given food.

Week 17 & 18: Struggled with the Reglan that was being used instead of Zofran. I wasn't puking as much, but still had incredibly strong, debilitating nausea. I had also read that Reglan wasn't intended for long term use and could cause serious depression. I wasn't too worried about it at the time since I felt fine mentally. We also found out the baby was a boy and I made James pick a name for him that same day. I desperately needed something to hold onto - a way to bond with this baby that was making me so sick.

It's a boy!!! He's sticking his tongue out in this picture.


Week 19: The depressive effects of the Reglan started to kick in. Since the Reglan wasn't really helping anyways, Matria decided to go ahead and use Zofran. Of course, insurance wasn't happy since Zofran is so much more expensive. But the Zofran did work better, even though I was still pretty nauseous.

Week 20: Had to have a root canal done on a back molar. I had gone to the dentist about two weeks before I found out I was pregnant and discovered the cavity then. However, the dentist couldn't do anything about it during the first trimester and by the time I felt like I could go in and not throw up all over the guy, it had gotten to the root canal stage. Sigh. However, as I was laying back in the dentist's chair trying hard to think positive thoughts about not puking on him, I had a memorable bonding moment with Ian. In my mind, I was telling him that we would make it through this appointment and get to go home and rest. Up until then, even though I would never have said so, I had kind of felt like he was part of the problem. From that point on though, it was him and me against the HG monster. We were fighting it together and were going to make it through together.