HG During Pregnancy

Words by Fortesa Latifi

My head is in the toilet bowl, as it has been thousands of times in the last 8.5 months. As vomit splashes against the porcelain, I feel my toddler’s hands on my back. She says “I’m sorry, Mama” and my heart breaks a little. I flush the toilet and pull my daughter into my arms, telling her she has nothing to be sorry for. On our way out of the bathroom, she stops and kneels in front of her potty training potty. She pretends to gag and my heart breaks a little more.

This was just one moment in my life as a person suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe and persistent form of morning sickness. In my case, having HG (as it’s colloquially known among sufferers) means that I’ve vomited between five and 10 times every single day of both of my pregnancies. Instead of gaining weight, I lose it; because of the extent of my physical illness, I find myself very depressed (a common reality for women with HG); each week, I receive several rounds of intravenous fluids in an attempt to at least keep myself vaguely hydrated. Once, I vomited so violently that I gave myself black and bloodshot eyes that lasted for weeks, into the period when my book was being released and I was doing press hits for it. When I tell my daughter I need to use the restroom, she starts gagging and says “Mama do this.” I carry emesis bags everywhere I go, though I don’t really go many places.

It would be fair to ask why I would get pregnant a second time because this is how it was during my first pregnancy, too. I guess my answer is mostly: dumb hope combined with an intense, visceral desire for my daughter to have a sibling. I prayed that I wouldn’t be as sick the second time around and even took concrete steps to try to lower my chances of having another hellish nine months. Doctors are now prescribing the diabetes drug metformin ahead of pregnancy for women who have had HG before. In my case, it didn’t work, but it has been a buoy for many. 

It seems silly to say this but I also think I genuinely forgot how deeply miserable I was the first time I was pregnant. Almost the moment my daughter was born, I remember thinking, that wasn’t that bad despite the fact that I had been hospitalized several times for dehydration and spent my entire pregnancy throwing up after eating or drinking anything (or sometimes, without ingesting anything at all). But also—and I think any mother can understand this—when you meet your baby, your pregnancy just kind of fades away. I could remember in a distant way that I had been miserable and depressed and starving but it didn’t seem to matter now that I was holding my daughter in my arms. 

And so, I told my husband we could have another.

I even figured that the sooner we had a second child, the better. I thought that if we waited too long, I might remember too much of my misery and never want to do it again. And, as someone with four siblings, I knew I wanted my daughter to have a sibling. My husband’s point-of-view on this was basically that he felt the same way but that it was entirely up to me when I wanted to jump back into the gauntlet of pregnancy. (Among many other things, I love him for this.)

I got pregnant for the second time when my daughter was 16 months old. For the first few weeks, before the nausea set in, I felt hopeful that maybe this time would be different. Maybe the metformin had worked its magic. But then, when I was around 8 weeks pregnant, I started vomiting—and I haven’t stopped since. (Not everyone who suffers from HG vomits their entire pregnancy, but I do.)

In those early weeks, I wondered if I had made a mistake getting pregnant again. How was I going to parent a toddler, work a full-time job, launch my book (Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online), and be that sick all at the same time? Immediately, I felt like a flatter, grayer version of myself. I wasn’t the mom, wife, sister, or friend I wanted to be. And how could I have been? I was barely living through each day. At just two months pregnant, I saw the seven months stretching ahead of me as interminable and unending.

And it has felt that way. There have been nights where I laid my head on my mother’s or husband’s lap and sobbed until my head ached. There have been countless trips to the park with my daughter that I’ve missed out on because I don’t have the energy to go and don’t want to vomit in the public trash can. I have vomited so much that I burst enough blood vessels in my eye to leave it murky and bloody for a month. I have had to tell my daughter, too many times, that Mommy is resting. Depression has settled over me like a fog and sometimes, it’s been hard to see my way out. In my worst moments, I wonder what is wrong with me that pregnancy is this hard for me.

In my best moments, I remember what I’m doing this for—like when my daughter climbs onto my lap and rubs my belly and talks about “baby sisser” or when my husband wipes my tears and thanks me for everything I’m going through to grow our family. When I laugh and talk with my sisters, I imagine my daughter being able to do the same with her sister in the future and suddenly, the vomiting doesn’t feel that bad.

There’s a lot of discussion in modern parenthood about the lack of a village that it takes to raise a child. I’m one of the lucky few who has a robust village. Over Christmas, I stayed with my in-laws for a month while they took care of me and my toddler. Once the new year started and the nausea didn’t abate, my family and I returned to Los Angeles, where my mother and mother-in-law have taken turns spending weeks on end with us. Since January, we have rarely been without one of them. My husband scrubs our toilets daily to make my repeated vomiting slightly less awful. He brings me home my only cravings—McFlurries and french fries—even though I throw them up after eating. He, along with our mothers, takes care of all the chores around the house. My sister lives a few houses down the street from us and I spend nearly every evening at her house, where she cooks dinner for everyone and my toddler spends her favorite hours of the day with her cousins. My good friend Jo, who is a labor and delivery nurse, comes to my house every few days to re-insert an IV port so I can get fluids.

And still, pregnancy with hyperemesis gravidarum is hell. It is vomit-soaked hell. But when I look at my daughter, I remember what’s waiting for me on the other side. In a little more than a month —the moment the placenta is removed from my body—I’ll be done vomiting and our family will be complete. One month and two days left—but who’s counting?

Fortesa Latifi is a journalist and the author of the critically acclaimed Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter and her second daughter. You can find her online @hifortesa or her Substack.