Hyperemesis Gravidarum: A Diary

I'm seven weeks. Hospitals, ER visits, insanity. Bleeding last night. Thought maybe miscarriage, but the bleeding stopped, and I'm still puking right along. I haven't eaten food in 11 days. Still not drinking. Still on home IVs. Losing weight (8 pounds so far). If I can't eat soon, if I lose 14 more pounds, I will have to go on a PICC line. This will be fed into a vein in my elbow, threaded up this vein, around my shoulder and down into my chest about two inches from my heart. This will drip feeding solution into my bloodstream and keep me and the baby from starving to death. It can cause serious problems, so I'm not looking forward to it, but I have to try to survive.

Ptyalism is here for the first time: I can't swallow my own spit or I vomit. I have to spit in a cup all day long. Ah, the joys of lying in a bed, vomiting while peeing and pooping on myself (I puke that hard) all while collecting a big cup of smelly viscid spit! All pregnant women envy me.

Can't write more now. Feeling too bad.

I have been in the hospital. I just got back yesterday. I tried to get online and write an entry but I was puking as I was typing, so I had to go. I ended up vomiting over 40 times throughout the day. That is to say, I threw up every eight minutes from the moment I woke up in the morning to the moment I went to sleep last night. I stopped counting after the 40th episode. It pains me to admit this, but I was ready to abort. Can you believe it? ME. This illness is unbelievable. I know I must fight. Sometimes I'm too weak and others have to save me (and my baby) from myself. When I start talking “smack” my husband has learned to take a stand, talk me out of it, just say no. He learned this the hard way.

I am only six weeks. I’m on home IVs, and my first vein has already blown. I haven't eaten any type of solid food in five days and have not had even four glasses of fluid to drink in four days. I have never been this sick this soon.

I can't sleep. I have had 11 hours of sleep in the last 72 hours. Nights are the worst. I am begging to end it at night. I am begging, unbelievably, to kill my very much wanted child. It is not something I want to do. Even in my desperation I know it violates ethics. But sometimes that knowledge isn't enough. That doesn't make it right. The bottom line is: I MUST NOT DO IT.

Please, please pray for me; I'm in the "belly of the whale."