I am now 14 months after having my baby, I should have been free from the HG symptoms for well over a year now. But my sickness is ongoing and I’m yet to have an official diagnosis, though my consultants are 99% sure I have gastroparesis. This is what life is like for me currently:

My Symptoms to date
~ Lack of appetite and food aversions
~ Feeling full quickly after eating
~ Severe nausea throughout the day (particularly after eating)
~ Bouts of vomiting (between 2-5 episodes a day on average)
~ Stomach pain, especially after eating. It usually gets worst, until I vomit
~ Dizziness and energy level drops
~ Acid reflux
~ Low mood and anxiety
~ Weight loss

How it affects me on a daily basis
~Never being able to eat out in public, go for a meal or have dinner with friends
~ Fluctuations in energy, depending on whether my food is digested or just sat in my stomach
~Difficulty maintaining a stable weight. When my vomiting is worse or my stomach not digesting I can lose weight.
~Malnutrition. I have to rely on a lot of supplements and vitamins to keep up with all the micronutrients that my body isnt getting from the food
~Electrolyte imbalances. It is quite easy for my electrolytes like sodium and potassium to get low from where I am sick so frequently
~Dehydration. If the vomiting is particularly severe or I am in a flare up, I will sometimes struggle to keep down fluids. During these times I may need IV fluids to stabilise me until I can tolerate oral fluids again
~Pain, most meals I eat gives me pain under my ribs on the left hand side. It varies in severity. Often this pain is relieved when I am sick, but sometimes it can go on for longer
~Nausea, though I have antiemetics they do not help my nausea. This can be really hard to deal with and leave me often wishing I would be sick to end the prolonged nausea
~ Not wanting to go out for fear of vomiting in public or being unable to get to a bathroom
~ Feeling low at these ongoing symtoms and worrying that they will never go. Often this condition can get me so down I wish that I had never made it through the pregnancy. I would wish to die just so that I can be free of this prolonged hell.

It is now 22 months since my sickness started (started as HG) that I would still find myself suffering nausea and vomiting on a daily basis. I desperately wish and pray for a relief or cure for this condition.

But how can hyperemesis gravidarum continue despite no pregnancy? Well for me, it didn’t continue..it changed from pregnancy sickness to a sickness condition. This is not hyperemesis gravidarum, this is most likely Gastroparesis. And to get it from HG is so rare, don’t let my story scare you. One of my doctors theorised that I may have got this gastroparesis from the time my feeding tube became dislodged and coiled from my jejunum back into my stomach. At the time, it caused a lot of pain..so much so that I was given entonox. It is thought that this dislodged tubed caused damage to the nerves in my stomach which is why my stomach paralyses.

It is also possible I already had this condition mildly but that the pregnancy just made it worse, as I already had bowel motility issues from before pregnancy. I will never truly know whether the HG was a direct cause of the gastroparesis I now suffer.

My hopes now are to get this condition formally diagnosed so that I can begin treatment so that I can finally have my life back. I could look back and be bitter at the time I should have spent enjoying my new son being completely ruined by this sickness condition, but I cannot change the past. I need to move on from this and focus on a healthier future and if that means learning how to live with this condition then that is what I must do but I refuse to be beaten by it.