Tuesday 21 February 2017

If you only read one blog post, please make it this one

I've bored people to death about this, I know, but it's important to me, and it's my blog, and my 40th, so please, bear with me and give me the benefit of the doubt.

I want to explain more about my choices for number 13, the two charities I'm supporting. It's always so hard to choose to support a smaller charity when the big ones - cancer, NSPCC, heart disease - are so incredibly important, and more often that not touch our lives in ways we wish they didn't. I often feel guilty and even embarrassed about admitting that I am choosing smaller charities that can seem 'lesser' - but please, read on, and I hope I can do a decent job of explaining.

The first is Pregnancy Sickness Support (PSS) - a charity which, if you know nothing about it, seems to be asking for money to help women who have morning sickness. No. That is not right. Morning sickness is horrible, sure, I had it with Benjy and ChloĆ« and it's miserable. But Pregnancy Sickness Support is about research and support for women with hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) - this is NOT MORNING SICKNESS. It's a very different disease and again, because this is my blog, I'd love you to read on and understand more about it and why it's so devastating.

The thing that gets me the most is that in the UK, 1,000 women terminate a wanted pregnancy every year because their illness is so bad. That's 1,000 babies a year whose parents wanted them, but who aren't here, because for some women it was a choice between their life and the baby's; for others, they were so severely ill that continuing with the pregnancy would mean losing a job, which for many women means not being able to pay the rent; and for others, medicine just hasn't yet got the drugs they needed to be able to cope with the pregnancy.

Vomiting 50 times a day; burning your oesophagus from the acid you're throwing up; post-traumatic stress disorder for years afterwards; kidney failure; post-natal depression; diabetes; fear and avoidance of sex in case you fall pregnant (both partners) - these are all real, regular consequences of HG. Death has even been reported recently in the US due to HG. And another - it sounds small, but imagine this in your own situation - stopping at one child when you always dreamt of more because you simply can't survive another pregnancy. And the worst thing is, there are drugs which can help, but because of the thalidomide experience, many doctors won't prescribe them, or doctors themselves don't see the difference between morning sickness and HG as being significant enough to warrant treatment. But there is clinical evidence, there are new guidelines, and slowly things are changing.

It sounds dramatic but I literally don't know how I'd have survived my pregnancy with Erin without the advice and support that PSS gave me, and given that ChloĆ« and Erin are more likely than not to have HG, it matters enormously to me that things improve for women going through this awful condition. My case was only mild. I only lost a stone - albeit in the first 9 weeks of pregnancy - much less than most women; I never had to go to hospital to be rehydrated; my choices were between things like having a shower or lying downstairs on the sofa rather than in bed that day (it was one or the other, shower or go downstairs; to do both was impossible), or deciding whether it was worth stretching across the bed to reach the TV remote which would lead to half an hour of dry retching, or not retch but sit in silence all day; these are good choices, not like the choice of whether or not to keep my baby. I was lucky.

It's not morning sickness. Until you've seen it, please, take my word for it. PSS is desperate for funds - it's a small charity representing a poorly understood condition and it's in real danger of not surviving. I volunteer my time, and for my 40th, I will support them financially too.

I'd also mentioned in my 40to40 list that I want to support Tommy's, previously a 'miscarriage charity' but they now brand themselves 'saving babies' lives'. This week marks the due date for my first pregnancy, nine years ago. I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. It was awful, and even though I fell pregnant with Benjy soon afterwards and that pregnancy, and the subsequent two, went smoothly, it took me a little while to come to terms with the loss of the first pregnancy. As time went on I thought about it less and less, but I do still think about it, particularly at this time of year. We knew at the time that it was 'just one of those things' and the way we responded to it was reflective of that, but later, when I started understanding more about pregnancy through my work with PSS, I got a better sense and more of an awareness of what other families go through, when things are much, much worse - repeated, inexplicable miscarriages, at all stages of the pregnancy, through to full term. I didn't use Tommy's for support after I miscarried - I used another, smaller organisation - but the information and support I got from there helped me enormously. Tommy's does that and a lot more - they research prematurity, miscarriage and stillbirth and support families who experience these things. They're a fantastic organisation, I've donated to them in the past but it never feels enough, and that's why I want to do something for them too this year.

https://www.pregnancysicknesssupport.org.uk/
https://www.tommys.org/

1 comment:

  1. Whatever you are doing you can count on me for support Carrie. I think this blog really helps explain things around PSS and what they do. Very proud of you, Emma x

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