There is no doubt hyperemesis limits an awful lot of families. I personally know dozens of women who can not face going through pregnancy again despite wanting more children. Most of them already have one child but sadly some have none.

I've talked before about the benefits of having an only child and personally I do not believe that anyone should have a child to “provide siblings”. However, many people do want more than one child for their own reasons... me included! I wanted three.

Adoption is an option open to people in the UK and with over 4,500 children waiting for adoption in the UK adoptive parents are desperately needed. However, it is important that people considering adoption because they can't have more children biologically have taken the time to grieve for the babies they haven't had. Counselling may help if you are struggling with this and you should allow yourself to go through the grieving process. Most (though by no means all) of us women have grown up from a young age with ideas about our future family and the children we plan to have... not being able to for whatever reason is a genuine loss and the grief can be profound. Give yourself time to heal and come to terms with it.

What does the process involve in a nutshell? Well, to start find out as much as you can about adoption. Look online, read blogs about adoption, investigate which agencies are in your area and contact your local authority. You'll get invited along to an information meeting where you will find out more about what it means to be an adopter and about the children who need adopting. Here you will meet social workers, experienced adopters and other people considering adoption. At this point if you decide to continue you'll choose an agency to register with.

The process involved two stages.

Stage one involves the background checks, references and medical/criminal history checks. You also attend workshops to learn more about adoption and the challenges becoming an adoptive parent.

Kate Hilpern has sat on an adoption panel for ten years and I asked her to explain how adoption differs from standard parenting. Here she explains the challenges and gives a realistic take on the process:

Obviously if you can just hole up with your partner, whatever food and drink you can manage at the moment and some gentle Rom Com's then great – do it! However, if doing so risks inducing the wrath of the relatives from far and wide who are utterly convinced that you'll be cured by having your mind taken off it by trivial pursuits with tipsy aunties, then you may need a bit more of a survival guide...

1. Have a think about the comments you are likely to come across and have a few appropriate retorts up your sleeve. That way, on Christmas day when you are faced with your second cousin twice removed informing you how lucky you are to have time off work to lounge around in bed you'll have a quick reply... Oh yes, lounging around a hospital bed with a drip in my arm so I don't die has been such a relaxing break. I'm so lucky to be having to take medication in pregnancy and I'm especially lucky to have been on sick leave from the job I love for so long that we are struggling to pay the mortgage. Hell, who needs a mortgage anyway when you're living on a hospital ward? 
2. Don't sign up to cater. Seriously, rooky mistake peeps... Even if they promise to do it all and assure you that you won't have to lift a finger... it's a trick. If it's in your house you will still end up doing all the cooking and cleaning, you'll have beds to make, loo roll to buy and masses of recycling to sort out after. I learned this one the hard way. 
3. Shop online. Yes we all want to support local shops and mooch round Christmas markets and unique boutiques dishing out free mince pies and Christmas cheer - but there is plenty of years in the future – And by future I mean in about 25 years because you're about to be financially crippled by children so work on your relationship with Amazon, Asda and Argos now, make them your friends! 
4. If you can get it gift wrapped then do. Wrapping presents was a major spew inducer for me, I think it was the amount of arm movement involved. Unfortunately Mr Spewing Mummy is not talented in the art of wrapping and when I say “not talented” I mean he's utterly incapable. He's good at emptying spew buckets though so I really can't complain. If a friend comes to visit or asks if they can help – get out the paper and sticky tape, bingo! 
5. Don't over indulge. If you do have the odd moment of wellness or if you're luckily over the worst at this point just try not to change your routines and systems that are working at the moment. I had relapses after all three hyperemetic Christmas's because I did too much, ate the wrong stuff and didn't rest enough... It's just not worth it. 

The long and short of it though is that Christmas with hyperemesis gravidarum is never going to be easy, unless you happen to have the worlds most perfect family – in which case do you want to swap? I am truly sad for everyone suffering this year, the isolation is most pronounced when you're surrounded by loved ones who don't see how much you are suffering. But remember... you are not alone and this won't last forever... Christmas happens every year and next year you'll get to be Santa, honestly, that's Mega!

Oh and don't forget to put our book on your Christmas list!

When my fiancée told me at 05.26am on the 7th May 2013 that she was pregnant I firstly didn't know what to do - whether to jump up and scream, shout “OK honey” and go back to sleep, hug her and pat her on the back or grab my 'men's department' and shout they work and congratulate them!! I opted for the hug her and the typical male line “are you sure?”

This seems a life time ago and from that early morning in May till now the one thing that has been constant is..... SICKNESS!!!

My fiancée has struggled from the start with this and from early on she told me that she was heavily sick with our first child but this had stopped at 12 weeks (well 11 weeks and 6 days to be precise!). So when she said she had a metallic taste in her mouth I knew something was different and boy did I find out! From very early May she was sick morning, noon and night and it would be caused by the slightest thing - a smell from me, a smell from outside, a taste of food and just about anything.

At first certain food and drinks were craved - such as Orange Fanta! To be honest she was getting through 4-5 cans a day just to take away the metallic taste. So me being the practical one looked around all the supermarkets and found one that had an offer on cans of Orange Fanta - so I purchased 30 cans to get us through a week and save myself from nipping to the corner shop at 21.55pm to get her supplies.

Well did this backfire or what?!?!? This craving was very short lived and after having Orange Fanta coming through her nose (literally!!!) the taste and smell was the worst she had ever had and couldn't stomach another can or even look at one - so there I was stumped with 28 cans of Orange Fanta.

This was not my only 'bulk buying' disaster. They ranged from having 17 bags of Walkers Chunky Ridge Salt and Vinegar through to various chocolate bars and biscuits.

So - I was on countdown to 12 weeks and was rapidly ticking off so many different foods it was untrue - even Mcdonalds Fries were banished and never to be seen again (apart from the sink and that's a clear up operation I don't want to see again!!!).

BOOM we/I made it to 12 weeks, slightly out of pocket for over shopping, gradually overweight and having enough sugars inside me to power me up until 2015! And I still had 11 cans of Orange Fanta in the fridge.

12 weeks became 13, which became 15 and you get the pattern.

The one thing I have forgotten to mention throughout the whole of this is - DEODORANT and AFTERSHAVES. I have gone through 7 different deodorants and at present I'm currently using Nivea Silk and Smooth 48hr (yes its a women's one but I can confirm it smells nice and works) At one point my deodorants were located on top of the fridge as I had to spray them outside. I have since moved to roll on and now women's deodorant. Now, back in the day Channel Platinum Aftershave would send my fiancée into a frenzy and make her drag me upstairs and make me late for work but now it sends me to the naughty step for being stupid by spraying it in the house and sends her for her latest 'go to product' to stop being sick. As of this morning I now have a stock of deodorants in the car (2 of which I cant use!!) and 2 aftershaves.

Only once through this pregnancy have we argued about the sickness and this prompted her to tell me to put a 2p coin in my mouth and suck on it for an hour and that's how her mouth feels constantly. So not one to shirk a challenge - in went 4p (just because I wanted to prove a point!!) and yes I can confirm its horrendous but I didn't tell her that!

We are now 2 weeks from our little fella coming out to play and Stacey (I've called her fiancée and “she” throughout this post so thought I would confirm she has a name) is still being sick - she has good days and bad days but the average is once a day at least.


My only piece of advice for any 'geezer' (because that's what I am!) in this situation is to 'man up' and be prepared to clear sick up, unblock sinks, hold up hair, wash sick away from streets, find nearest toilets in shopping centres ASAP, DON'T BUY BULK, suck 2p coins and quickly adapt to women's deodorant.

And you know what... all this will be forgotten about in under 2 weeks when we get to meet our son.

Since writing this post Matthew and Stacey have had their little boy Freddie. Here are some pictures. Well done Matthew and Stacey you are officially hyperemesis gravidarum survivors now and I think Matthew deserves recognition as an HG Hero for being a super husband and wearing women's deodorant.

'Tis the season to be jolly, fa lala la la – la la F*** Off!

Oh the joys of Christmas with hyperemesis gravidarum. It's the time of year you are surrounded by food and drink and relatives who bombard you with well meaning advice about ginger and crackers and thinking positively. Tales of their wonderful pregnancies and their awful pregnancies which they “just got on with” abound along with drunken lectures about how grateful you should be and how lucky you are and how beautiful pregnancy is.

Money is likely to be tight if you've been off work for weeks or months and listening to other people moaning about feeling sick from over indulgence makes you want to commit genocide on the entire greedy nation.

I've spend three Christmas's in the throws of hyperemesis and the intervening three I was breast feeding. I shan't go into detail about my own Yule Tide experiences as family on both sides may disown me for announcing their failures on the world wide web, but believe me... I feel your pain at having to spend Christmas with hyperemesis and with people who do not have hyperemesis. This will be my first Christmas neither pregnant or breastfeeding for 7 years and I intend never to be pregnant or breast feeding ever again – that is cause for celebration indeed!

There is of course another reason to celebrate, and that is the children. On the whole, having people tell me how “worth it” the sickness is would really hurt, particularly in my first pregnancy, because I really didn't know it would be worth it... I worried often that I wouldn't bond with the baby and that if I hated pregnancy this much I might hate parenthood even more. I felt no attachment or bond to the baby, which is natural, I mean, if it weren't for the medications the pregnancy would have killed me! Those feelings were distressing, depressing and above all, secret! We had tried for 7 months to get pregnant, experienced the pain of miscarriage and I wanted nothing more than to be a mother.

But at Christmas it was the one time of year that I really did look forward to having a baby. It is hard to imagine things you have never experienced before, (like being a parent for example!), but Christmas is tenable – because we all know what Christmas is like and how magical it is for children and we can project that. I was able to imagine the following Christmas and the one after that and all the ones after that. I was excited about being Santa for the next 18 years of my life – they would be the best. I knew Rob and I would create new traditions, merged from our own childhoods. That from now on our Christmas's would be about getting up at 5.30 am to watch our children's faces as they opened their stockings. I knew I would be able to teach them about the seasons and about the light returning to the world and we would go for cold winter walks and make snowmen and eat mince pies and sing songs and tell stories and this whole nightmare would have been worth it.

And I hate to say it, particularly to those who don't yet have children, but it is worth it. It really, honestly, truly IS!

 

 

2014 update - If you are suffering this year don't forget to put Hyperemesis Gravidarum - The Definitive Guide on your wishlist!