The Nausea
WEEK 5
My hands were shaking so violently that I almost spilled my ginger beer as I waited for the train.
I was only 5 weeks pregnant and it felt like the world was trying to kill me. I had just finished a shift in ICU and those 12 hours had felt like a lifetime. The week before, when I was 4 weeks pregnant, I had had the luxury of the nausea coming in waves. A wave would hit me intermittently – then pass – and I would think to myself, “This isn’t too bad, I can tolerate this.”
My initial HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) at 4 weeks was 1000. One week later, at 5 weeks, my hormone level had jumped to 35,000.
That’s when the waves DISAPPEARED.
There were no waves anymore - only a constant, unbearable misery.
HCG levels in pregnancy generally double every couple of days, and I could feel this rise in nausea SO ACUTELY that I began to develop an INTENSE ANXIETY as I dreaded each following day, knowing that, inevitably, the nausea was going to get worse…..and worse…..and worse.
My olfactory senses were so heightened, that the typical hospital “smell” nearly sent me into convulsions when I started my shift that morning. Who knew that the world was such an horrendous place. I felt like my senses were being assaulted from every angle.
I entered my patient’s room and shuddered as I put on a plastic gown and mask; the smell of the PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) was so intense that I nearly passed out. I gagged and swayed as I took handover/report. The nausea was so overwhelming that I could hardly listen to what the nurse was saying.
I proceeded to prepare an antibiotic and the “fumes” inside the enclosed vial were so fiercely rancid that I nearly threw up into my mask.
It was only 8am.
I wasn’t going to make it.
Somehow I survived, what felt like, the longest shift of my life, but I still had to tackle the trip home on the train. I was ready to weep. The smells on the train were a toxic combination from hell; body odour, deodorant, cologne, halitosis (bad breath), perfume, smoke, putrid stains on the seats, dirt, feet, food, alcohol breath etc. – I was convinced it was all going to kill me.
Somehow I kept my esophagus clamped shut long enough to get home, where I started retching violently. I took a shower and lay in the fetal position in bed, rocking back and forth – nay, convulsing – from the nausea that wracked my body.
“I’m so pathetic,” I lamented to my husband as I wept. “I’m only 5 weeks pregnant and I can’t even work. How do other women work while they are pregnant? I am weak. I am so so weak.”
My husband sighed, “You can’t compare yourself to others,” he said in exasperation.
I ignored him and continued rocking back and forth in bed.
Everyone in my family has suffered from severe nausea in pregnancy, so I knew I had a genetic pre-disposition to this, but it was so much more severe than I had expected.
Was this normal? Surely this couldn’t be normal.
I felt like I was going to die.
Little did I know that this was only the beginning of my nausea, and little did I know that that was to be my last shift at work.
WEEK 6
I stared with dread at the pills in my palm.
Did I really have to take these?
I scrunched my face in disgust as I swallowed the steroids and estrogen pills. I was taking these four times a day, including progesterone pessaries that, yes, go up the vagina.
This particular combination of hormones and steroids seemed to make my nausea worse – if that was even possible. Both estrogen and progesterone are vital hormones to sustain a pregnancy until the placenta takes over at around 12 weeks gestation, so I had to take these whether I wanted to or not; I was also taking steroids to prevent rejection of the baby (due to my high uterine Natural Killer cells) so I obviously had to continue taking those pills as well.
But my prenatal vitamins?
I couldn’t stomach those.
I couldn’t even stomach water. Water suddenly had a weird, disgusting, metallic taste with an even worse aftertaste that lasted for hours.
I thought back to my days working in Clinic as a naive little midwife, reprimanding women who lamented that they were too sick to take their vitamins.
“But it’s extremely important for the development of the baby, ” I would say, “and also to keep you from becoming severely depleted.”
I expected these woman to take their pills (and drink water) whether they wanted to or not. And yet here I was, COMPLETELY UNABLE to take my multivitamin or drink water – WHAT A HYPOCRITE.
Instead, I made sure to at least take my folic acid (to prevent neural tube defects like Spina Bifida) and I resorted to drinking only ginger beer – ICE COLD ginger beer.
WEEK 7
I dreaded night time.
I suffered from overwhelming anxiety in dread of these long nights.
As the day would drag on, my nausea would progressively get worse and worse. I honestly have NO idea who coined the phrase “morning sickness” – total BS I say – for this was a 24-hour sickness.
I was taking ginger tablets, vitamin B6, Ondansetron (Zofran: an anti-nausea/anti-emetic) and Doxylamine (Restavit/Unisom: an antihistamine that helps with nausea and has the added benefit of making you drowsy) at a dose that would have knocked me out for several days pre-pregnancy. I couldn’t tell if any of these things helped or not, but I was willing to try anything.
I had also tried Peppermint & Lemon Essential oils (Research articles here), which helped briefly the first week, but once those tolerable “waves” of nausea disappeared the oils no longer helped; in fact I was repulsed by them.
At the end of the day I’d take my last dose of hormones and steroids. Within thirty minutes “the waves” would start – painful, burning waves of nausea (on top of my underlying nausea) that would emanate from the middle of my chest and radiate to my toes and finger tips.
Painful is as precise as I can describe these waves of nausea that wracked my body; I would lay in the fetal position, clutching my chest and screaming “I’m going to die, I’m not going to survive this, I’m going to die!”
In the background, “Binaural Beats” pulsed loudly on YouTube, somehow resonating at the same octave as my nausea. They were supposed to help me go to sleep, or distract me, or help with the nausea somehow – I’m not sure if it did.
My husband would stand there helplessly, watching me suffer, and trying not to cry. This was a horrendous form of torture for him – a torture he was not prepared for.
A torture WE were not prepared for.
We had survived infertility and IVF – we FINALLY received good news – but we didn’t have time to celebrate before the next wave of suffering hit us. It was like surfacing for a brief gasp of air before being pummeled by another wave. The only difference was that this time we had hope; hope that the end was near.
In the meantime my husband was thrown back into the bleak and frantic desperation of helplessness; there was NOTHING he could do to help me; he had to reach into the depths of his empty soul to search for the tiniest remaining morsel of strength in order to watch his beloved suffer – AGAIN.
He would choke back sobs as he’d tuck me into bed.
Watching me scream was unbearable – I was completely and utterly inconsolable.
Silent tears would stream down my husband’s face as he’d leave the room. He’d close the door dejectedly and sit on the couch. Sandwiched between sadness and guilt, he’d turn the volume up on the TV in order to muffle my screams, for he didn’t know what else to do.
WEEK 8
“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked me.
I was hunched over in the seat. The car ride to the doctor’s office had nearly killed me.
“I am SO sick, I think I’m going to die.” I could barely get the words out.
The corners of his mouth lifted.
“Let’s do a scan,” he said as he smiled.
I couldn’t smile in return. I walked into the other room and started taking my pants off.
“No, this is an abdominal scan,” he said.
I had gotten so used to trans-vaginal scans that I had forgotten what normal scans were like.
He placed the transducer on my stomach and his smile widened.
“That’s why you’re so sick,” he said, not in the least bit surprised.
I stared in shock at TWO black circles with little white beating blobs inside.
“Are there two?” I cried incredulously.
He nodded.
My husband stared in shock for a while until tears of disbelief began to flow. He squeezed my hand tightly. I was so choked up that I couldn’t say another word.
I held my breath as the doctor checked each heartbeat individually – they were both strong and fast.
Now THIS was too good to be true.
