Catching Idle Butterflies

HelpHER

For today’s entry, I decided to share with you a story of a friend of mine in her own words. This is a letter she sent to our congressman and senators about a year ago asking for funding of a nasty disease that too many people don’t even know exists. It too many times goes undiagnosed and with terrible consequences:

Nine years ago, I found out I was pregnant with my first child. I was 22 years old and not married to the father. I was scared, but SO excited. We both wanted kids, and we had planned to be married WAY off into the future. Not long after we found out, I started throwing up. I can remember twice, at least, having to go into the ER because I was throwing up blood. After roughly two hours on IVs, I was sent home. I couldn’t work or go to school because I was always nauseous. Everything made me want to throw up. No one believed anyone could be that sick. Only my boyfriend believed. He saw me every day and saw how bad I felt and looked. It finally let up at around 20 weeks and I was able to function again. I swore I would never going to have any more kids. Well, after some preterm labor scares, my beautiful daughter was born on April 15, 1996.

It took us five years to even consider doing it again. But we did. We tried for two years and finally tried fertility drugs. I went into this pregnancy expecting to get sick. This pregnancy was nowhere near as bad as the first one. I was nauseated all the time, but I never got to the point that I was vomiting uncontrollably like before. I can remember lying in bed crying to my husband (we were married three months after our oldest was born) that I was a terrible mom because I just didn’t want to be pregnant anymore. I wanted another baby, but I DID NOT WANT to be sick anymore. I was able to go to work, but it was so very hard. After our beautiful second daughter was born 3 weeks to the day early, we decided that was it. NO MORE. I planned to have my tubes tied as soon as possible. Well, I switched jobs and other things came up and we put it off. When my second child was nine months old, I started to feel nauseous all the time. After a week of this, I realized that I might be pregnant again. I refused to tell anyone because I was afraid that if I told, it would be true.

I finally made an appointment to my OB, and yes, I was pregnant. I cried as I called my husband and told him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want more kids, I love kids. I just didn’t want to go through it again. Well, we did. It was the worst pregnancy yet. At around 9 weeks I woke up one morning vomiting uncontrollably. I ended up in the hospital for rehydration. This stopped the constant vomiting for about two weeks. At 11 weeks, I ended up in the ER for IVs. Again, it stopped the vomiting. At 13 weeks, back I went, this time to the clinic for IVs again. After my ER visit, they had given me an instruction sheet that had Hyperemesis written across the top. OH MY GOD, there was a name for it. The day after winding up in the clinic for IVs I searched the internet for Hyperemesis. I found the HelpHER website ( http://www.helpher.org ) and almost cried. I wasn’t the only one who had this disease. It really was a disease and wasn’t all in my head as I had been lead to believe all those years!! On April 14, 2004, I was fired from my job because I could not make it to work. My boss claims it was for other reasons, of course. I wanted to fight this at the time, but I was just too sick. I decided my health and the health of my unborn child was more important.

One of the first things I talked about on the site was if anyone else had thought about terminating. I do not believe in abortion. I never have. At that point in my pregnancy, I was seriously considering aborting my beautiful child. This foundation saved my unborn child’s life. The women on the site understood my feelings and helped me to deal with them and all the other problems. I was so sick that summer that even though I was home all day, my youngest child was still enrolled in full-time daycare. If my husband had to work nights, we had to hire a babysitter. I was completely unable to care for an active 1 year old. After 8 months of HELL, my awesome, handsome son was born. He is now almost 11 months old and it tears me up to think I ever even considered aborting him. I know in my head that it was just the sickness, but in my heart it still hurts.

Please, give us the funding we need to research and find a cure for this disease. Help other women like myself to prevent terminations. It does happen. There have been numerous women on the HelpHER site that have found the site after a termination and wished that they had found it sooner.