Hyperemesis gravidarum doesn't only bring a whole lot of nausea and vomiting to the sufferer. As if that wasn't enough it can bring pytalism (excessive saliva), pounding headaches, torn stomach muscles, torn oesophagus', loss of bladder control and unimaginable misery. And it brings nine long months of being pretty much bed bound.

Someone once said to me, during my first pregnancy, when I was about 20 weeks pregnant and had been bed bound for about 4 months “Oh Caitlin, I hope that when I'm pregnant I can have time off work and lounge around in bed, it sounds lovely”... amazingly this person is still alive and it is a testament to just how much HG robs you of your ability to speak for yourself that barely retorted with a weak “no you don't, that's a silly thing to say”. Indeed, during pregnancy my voice was so small and inaudible that I took that and hundreds of other comments and let them well up inside into a pit of festering misery and loneliness and anger, which is now thankfully spilling out in this blog like an erupting super volcano causing a catastrophic extinction of the ignorance and stigma surrounding HG. Or at least I hope it is, but these things take time. The eruption itself doesn't cause the bulk of extinctions, it's the aftermath that does it (I read a LOT of apocalyptic literature during my bed-bound years).

Anyway, back to the point of the post... Being bed bound is far from enjoyable! Admittedly some women do manage to get up in the second half of pregnancy and some even manage to leave the house on occasion. But realistically us HG sufferers end up spending vast amounts of our pregnant lives wasting away in our lonely beds.

Now you all know me well enough by now to know that I'm likely to start suggesting some pro-active ways to make the experience of laying in bed a little more tolerable. And that's exactly what I'm going to do! I'm all for embracing the misery and tackling it head on.

Over the next two weeks I'll do a number of posts on issues related to being stuck in bed for months on end and how you can reduce your suffering and also reduce the risks of complications due to being bed-bound such as Deep Vein Thrombosis and pressure sores.

To kick off the series I've managed to sort out a super brilliant competition for you to win a brand new DreamGenii Pregnancy Pillow, worth £45.99, to help you get as comfy as possible in bed or on the sofa. You can use it after for breastfeeding or if you're never planning to be pregnant again you can give it to a friend or donate it to a current HG sufferer! I bought one in my first pregnancy and it served me extremely well through the following 27 months of three entirely bed bound pregnancies!

Check out my competition to win a DreamGenii pillow before the 24^th August and let your pregnant friends on Facebook know about it!