Twin Pregnancy: Not Exactly the Fun I Imagined

I find it sort of ironic that I have found myself in this very situation. By situation, I mean, pregnant and absolutely miserable, because I’ve never been this sick in my entire life. It’s ironic because I have spent years working toward getting to this very place in my life that I’m in: finding the one, being in love, and getting pregnant. I was so excited to get pregnant previously, I used to romanticize it! It was a core value to me, to find someone who wanted children as much as me, and I found him! I glamorized what pregnancy would be like for me, and I definitely don’t think I’m alone. The media feeds us images of these “glowing” women with an adorable baby bump, smiling ear to ear! Now when I see images like that, it just makes me so angry, because honestly, it’s all a complete and utter lie, at least for me and every other women I’ve spoken to.

Everyones journey is different, and I of course, I can only speak about mine. I’m 11 weeks pregnant, and this is my pregnancy story so far.

I was in my OBGYN’s office for a routine check up when he walked in and said nonchalantly,

“You’re 34 years old right?”

“Yes” I mumbled a little embarrassed.

“Well what’s your current situation? Do you want kids? Are you with someone? If so, we should consider removing this IUD you have, I mean honestly we don’t even know if you’re fertile and I’ve had many patients your age, or even younger try for years without success of getting pregnant. We should give your body some time to adjust to being birth control free, it will definitely take at least 6 months to reset your system, honestly maybe even a year. We don’t even know If you’re ovulating effectively. You’ll be 35 soon and even getting pregnant at that age is considered geriatric for pregnancy”

Geriatric? Like a senior citizen? I thought about it, and maybe he was right. I live with my fiancé, we’re both very in love and kids are in are plans, and he definitely wouldn’t want my fertility affected….hmmmm I thought to myself…

“Ok, lets remove it!” I said confidently. Before I knew it, it was out. I left the office glowing and happy, and shared the news with my fiancé, who agreed it was a good idea to have it removed if that’s what the doctor said! After all, we always discussed wanting a big family. Sometimes when I’m hurled over the toilet throwing up for the 9th or 10th time that day, this prior moment repeats itself my head like a bad record. “What the hell was I thinking!” I think to myself as I dry heave over and over again into the toilet until I have trouble breathing, finally screaming out into the abyss “WHHYYYYY”….because there is literally nothing left for me throw up. Just bile and sometimes blood.

In this moment that I said yes, I had no idea that I would get pregnant exactly two days after the removal of my IUD, and that I would get pregnant, with not one, but two babies. So much for “my body needing time to adjust, or having trouble ovulating.” It was apparently beyond ready, but I wasn’t.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Wow, I’m so lucky! Yes, I am lucky. I’ve heard multiple stories of women having horrible fertility problems, trying 3 IVF rounds and it not even working, and their hearts breaking because they simply can’t have children. I know I’m lucky, but just because I’m “lucky” doesn’t mean the medical community and basically everyone around me shouldn’t take my suffering seriously. I have a condition called Hyperemesis Gravidarum, many shorten it to HG. It’s a fancy word for “severe morning sickness,” which I find comical as a description for the condition.

When I thought about what morning sickness might be like for me, I thought “oh maybe I’ll get a little nauseous and throw up 1 or 2 times in the first trimester.” Reality check: morning sickness, also known as “throwing up all hours of the day and night”, can happen any time of day, and is absolutely debilitating! It needs a new medical word to describe it ASAP! I mean, just for a second, if you are a man or woman who hasn’t been pregnant, please close your eyes and imagine what it would be like to be uncontrollably nauseous 24/7! Think about it, think about throwing up over and over again without any relief, because trust me, you don’t feel any better after you vomit. It’s not like the flu where you get better over time, it never stops, in fact it’s relentless. Nothing works to control it, and “it” decides your day for you, and you are a servant to “its” will. “It” decides if you can’t keep water down that day, even though you’re so thirsty your head is pounding and you can hear your own heart beating through your chest. “It” decides if you get to eat, “it” decides everything for you. And no, ginger doesn’t help, and if one more person suggests ginger to me: I’m going to scream bloody murder at them. For me personally, nothing helps. I have nausea medication prescribed to me for cancer patients that get nauseous from chemotherapy that doesn’t make a dent in my condition! That’s how strong female hormones are! The side effects of this medications are horrendous too. Zofran causes intense migraines, dry mouth, and makes you very irritable as it affects your serotonin. Bonjesta causes extreme drowsiness and gives me horrific nightmares too! I take these two medications to control my HG, but no matter what still feel awful.

At only 3 weeks pregnant, a week before my missed period, I felt this new sensation of debilitating nausea come over me like a wave I couldn’t control. I called my mom crying.

“What’s wrong with me!” I screamed into the phone.

“What if I have some stomach condition, I’ve been nauseous for 24 hours and unable to eat anything! I’ve never felt this way before in my life!” I cried so loud because I suspected I was pregnant, but didn’t want to admit that to myself. I simply wasn’t ready, I was not ready to feel this nausea all of the time, it was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my life and it still hasn’t gone away since that day I called my mother crying. This was supposed to take minimum 6 months after all, how on earth could I be pregnant?

I told my fiancé I suspected a possible pregnancy later that day, and he said there’s no way it’s possible. We stayed up that night looking up the pregnancy symptoms on google. I had all of them, but I wasn’t even technically “late” yet!

When I got up the next morning, still in the agony of my nausea, he said enough is enough.

“We’re getting a test today!” He exclaimed. “I want to know once and for all, I think you just ate something weird though.”

We drove to CVS and got a test. I started peeing on it, and within 5 seconds, a bright pink second line showed up next to the first. I read the instructions again shaking. Was I doing it wrong? It said it takes 3 minutes for a result to show up! The line just kept getting darker and darker. I wasn’t just pregnant, I was really, really pregnant! That’s what twins will do to your body. A normal singleton pregnancy produces HCG in our bodies, the pregnancy hormone. With twins or multiples, your body goes into overdrive producing HCG, which is why my test was so dark so early.

I walked out of the bathroom and the look on my face told my fiancé everything he needed to know. We hugged and I cried, he told me it was going to be ok, and that he was so excited for this news. He said it was meant be, which, I still believe it is. After all, there has to be a reward for suffering like this for months on end!

That moment feels so long ago to me now. Im nearly 3 months pregnant, and ever since that moment, I’ve basically lived in our bedroom. Too weak to even do the simplest task, like go downstairs to the kitchen, or go for a walk. All I can do is be sick, rest, wake up, be sick again, and repeat. I used to love mornings, and now I dread waking up. This condition is not taken seriously, and honestly, if this was happening to a man, I swear they would have a solution figured out by now! There’s over 5 types of pills that can get a man’s erection going if he can’t get it up himself, but for pregnant women throwing up to the point of extreme dehydration, exhaustion, and weight-loss, there’s nothing effective out there. Makes sense.

I think there is a massive stigma around a pregnant woman being sick. It’s sort of this attitude of “you’re so lucky to be pregnant,” combined with “well, she did this to herself.”

My doctors just tell me this condition basically happens to every women who is carrying multiples, and that things should improve by around week 16. One more month and a couple weeks to go…yay. My friends just tell me I seem fine, I went to lunch the other day after all right? Little do they know I puked in a bush before meeting them, and went to the bathroom twice to throw up during said lunch. Some days I just have to push myself to leave the house, for my own mental health and sanity. It’s a condition I’ve just come to realize that no one understands unless they’ve been through it themselves. I am in many support groups, and I have to thank the HER foundation for providing me with mentors and resources to talk to during this trying time. Without their support I probably wouldn’t be here right now.

I choose to hope that I will get better eventually, it’s the only thing keeping me going these days. Most women In my support group tell me they unfortunately experienced HG their entire pregnancy. Amy Schumer had the condition when she was pregnant and did a great documentary about it called “Expecting Amy” on HBO. It lasted the whole time for her, and she got her tubes tied after having her son. Girl, I totally understand! 10 months is way too long to live this way to go through it again. After getting so many IV’s because you’re so dehydrated, you start to feel like a science experiment.

I remember my mom telling me she was very sick when she was pregnant with me when I was a teenager. She told me she was hospitalized a couple of times, and lost a bunch of weight. She even showed me a photo of herself a day before giving birth to me. She didn’t look pregnant at all. At the time, I rolled my eyes when she wasn’t looking, and damn am I paying for that now. I somehow thought she must have starved herself on purpose, I was born at a very low birth weight after all. I found that photo of her selfish because she was so small, “how dare she not eat during her pregnancy” I thought to myself. HG runs in families, and just like an average person hearing about the condition, I thought she must be exaggerating or just doesn’t handle pregnancy well and did it to herself. There’s still doctors that think this condition is “in your head” or “caused by anxiety.” I can assure you, it’s not.

In the 1950’s I read that they used to make women with HG sit in a pool of their own vomit when they came into the hospital, because they thought they were throwing up for attention and that would teach them a lesson to “stop.” If only we could just stop it.

They’ve apparently done enough research now, over 70 years later to pinpoint HG to one gene marker. They know if you have this gene that you will have HG, they just don’t know how to fix it. Elevated hormone levels, as is such with my twin pregnancy also cause women to have HG because you have double the hormone levels of a normal pregnant women to support multiple babies and your body simply cannot handle it. With my genetic predisposition and twin pregnancy, I guess I was doomed from the start.

Here’s hoping to a better future for all of us who suffer with this illness.

For more resources on HG, or if you want to donate to the HER foundation, click here.