2025-07-31 – Health – www.theguardian.com
The Victorians called it ‘pernicious vomiting of pregnancy’, but modern medicine has offered no end to the torture of hyperemesis gravidarum – until now
The year my body revolted, I read all 1,296 pages of War and Peace. I did very little else. My body had become stuck in a perpetual rinse cycle, wringing itself out day and night. Becalmed on the sofa, too nauseated to mindlessly scroll, I found an unlikely emergency exit in the bloody Battle of Borodino. In between puking jags, I would prop the book open on my chest, squint at the tiny text, and drift into a Tolstoy-induced torpor. It occurred to me that clouds of saltpetre and the booming of cannon weren’t ideal conditions for a growing baby, but I had to go somewhere.
At 6am my husband left for work and I began another gruelling day on the front; purging viscous pond slime from my empty stomach and keeping up with the Cossacks on their flanking march. In the throes of extreme pregnancy sickness, I found strange comfort in…