HYPEREMESIS GRAVIDARUM - Long Awaited Update!

LOOKING BACK!
I know I have been gone for a very long time. So much has changed since my last update.  A lot has gotten worse, some things have stayed consistent, and other things have changed drastically.  I am sure there will be a lot that I will forget to mention since a lot has happened.  But let me get started.   I will try to go week by week.

Week 9 -  142-145lbs

   Nausea continued to be unbearable.  I continued to vomit every meal, snack, drink, and even vomited on an empty stomach.  Weakness continued.  But my appetite wasn't too bad, eating hadn't gotten difficult yet.  I ate a lot of soups, salads, fruit cups, fruit juices, fresh fruits, bagels, bread, cereals, eggs, and also bad stuff like pizza, Chinese food, bacon, sausage ect.  I basically ate what I craved along with trying to get as much healthy things in my body as I could.  Soup and salad was my favorite meals for the times I was most nauseous an found eating the hardest.  I take 2 Vitafusion Prenatal Gummy Vitamins with DHA and Folic Acid a day.  At the time I thought I looked so bad, weak, and a hot mess but looking back I looked great in comparison to the way I look and feel now at my current week in pregnancy.  I was really surprised that I didn't lose that much weight at that time.  I guess my strong appetite really compensated for the amount that I was vomiting.  I think I was around 142-145lbs at this point.
  I ended up successfully changing my insurance to Tricare Standard, and luckily this week I got my first doctors appointment and ultrasound with a non-military doctor and facility.  This pregnancy will be more costly then we planned but it will be worth it because I will have more say in the prenatal care that I receive.  My first appointment was different then most peoples first appointments.  There is a good reason behind it but I will not get into that right now.  So in this appointment I just simply got an ultrasound and nothing else, basically because that is all I wanted!  I just wanted to know that there was a baby really in there, that there was a heart beat, and that the baby was doing great.  So that is what I got, I had a transvaginal ultrasound (due to me being still so early).  That was honestly surprising, I had never heard of that, and didn't expect that.  They basically stuck the ultrasound probe in my vagina to do the ultrasound.  Then there was the most amazing image and sound I have ever seen an heard.  A VERY BEAUTIFUL HEALTHY BABY!.

You can see the head, body, and arms/hands

We were all shocked by what we saw.  I was shocked, hubby was, doctor was, and the ultrasound tech also was.  The baby was actually waving at us.  Very clearly and very obviously just sitting there consistently waving.  It was just such a beautiful and exciting moment.  Heartbeat was also great and strong.  I can never remember official stats so I honestly don't remember any measurements or heart rate.  I tend to go into some other zone when ever I go to the doctor and leave not remembering anything but feeling beyond excited.  At some points especially at appointments, it still feels like this whole pregnancy is just a dream.  Still so surreal and probably will be until the day I give birth.

Week 13 - 132-133lbs

  Between week 9-13 things just got so much worse.  Now I do not want to sound like I am complaining because I am surely not.  I am being open, honest, and real.  At the end of the day I still feel really blessed because I have had no complications thus far just some very extreme preggo symptoms and side effects.  By my 13th week I lost a total of 18 lbs total from my pre-pregnancy starting weight. By this time I was down to 132-133lbs which was just insane to me.  Most people gain weight during pregnancy but here I am losing massive amounts of weight.  This is more proof of how much nausea and vomiting really started affecting me. By the middle of week 10 I also lost my appetite.  So here I am violently vomiting all day, hungry but can't eat, nauseous 24/7, getting weaker and weaker by the day, and losing drastic amounts of weight.  I can honestly say by this time this all began affecting my spirit, mentally I was very down, and emotionally I felt defeated.  I love this baby so much, I was in constant prayer for better days, but it just seemed like every day things were just getting worse and worse for me.  By this point my mom told me she had never seen or heard of anyone ever being as sick or weak as I was just from pregnancy.  My mom talked to everyone and anyone about me.  From friends to doctors because she just felt so worried for me, my body just was not handling pregnancy hormones well at all.  We all began to wonder, how is this baby going to possibly grow and be healthy when I vomit every bit of nutrition I put in my body.  From food to water to prenatal vitamins.  The nausea medicine the ER had given me had never worked so I pretty much just stopped taking it. By this point I wasn't leaving the house at all, I had no energy to.  My mom kept asking what in the world would I do if I had a job and worked outside of the home and had places I absolutely needed to be.  My body just wouldn't have been able to handle it.  The only time I left the house was for doctors appointments and that is when I would run all my errands.
   This was also the week  I had my 2nd ultrasound/prenatal appoinment which was also essentially really my first appointment. Yes week 13! You are probably wondering what's going on but the whole appointment issue is mostly related to my insurance and the fact that a lot of doctors do not accept it and once I got an appointment I had to wait a couple of weeks until she had an opening.  Anyways at this appointment I got another ultrasound, blood tests, urine tests, and a pap smear (all of this stuff usually happens at your very first prenatal appointment).  Baby was still doing well THANK GOD!!!  I expected to get a lot of bad news back from my urine tests, and blood testing because I expected to be severely vitamin deficient and dehydrated.  Thankfully that was not the case.  The only thing that I was deficient in was vitamin D, and pretty severely.  So I got a rapid replenishment vitamin D pills to take for that.  I got new prenatals prescribed to me.  I also got a higher dosage of Zofran prescribed to me since the lower dose was absolutely not working. The dosage is now 8MG.

Hyperemesis Gravidarum  (HG) - a complication of pregnancy characterized by intractable nausea, vomiting, and dehydration and is estimated to affect .5% - 2% of pregnant women.  Hyperemesis gravidarum tends to occur in the first trimester of pregnancy and last significantly longer than normal.  Most women experience relief of morning sickness after the first trimester but women who have hyperemesis gravidarum will experience severe symptoms until they give birth to their baby, and sometimes even after birth. 
  I am not one that wants to ever claim a sickness that I have not officially been diagnosed with.  But to me it is quit clear to me that I have this.  I pray that I don't but based on my symptoms and research, what I am going through seems quit severe and very similar to HG.  Earlier in my pregnancy when I made a visit to the Military ER the doctor quickly talked about HG with me and sent me home with a paper that described and explained HG, I do not know if that was his way of diagnosing me with it.

Military Tricare Pregnancy Experience - 7 Weeks and 6 Days

  During week 7 I felt and looked like death!
  142-143 lbs (losing weight rapidly)

  Literally a day after my last post things got really bad and worse then I would have ever imagined they would.  I went from pretty much never vomiting to vomiting everyday, 2-6 times a day.  From the end of week 6 until yesterday when I was 7 weeks and 5 days I was sick as a dog.  I was weak and could not stand up straight much less walk or stand for long periods of time.  The most I could really do was sit up in bed and eat and walk to the bathroom.  I would vomit every single meal I had, I would vomit snacks, I would vomit anything I drank, and I would also vomit when I had an empty stomach.  The only thing that prevented me from vomiting was sleeping so everyday I would just try to sleep the day away.  My nausea was so the worst I had ever experienced, it was so uncomfortable that it was almost painful.  Vomiting on an empty stomach and the morning is the worst, there is nothing but stomach acid that comes up.
  So you are probably wondering why I didn't just go to the doctor, and have I had my first prenatal appointment.  Well I did not see a doctor of any sort until yesterday and that was not a result of not trying.  I wanted so badly to seek doctors care but Navy Medical has been a pain in the ass from the start and still are being a pain in the ass.  Mind you I have Tricare Prime, this insurance became effective December 1, 2013 and this appointment I was trying to make would have been my very first introduction into the military healthcare system.  I did not think any of this would be a big deal.  As someone who has a Masters in Healthcare Administration I can say what they are making me go through is absolutely ridiculous, the healthcare system is very hard to navigate for someone who is just entering the system, and lastly they give you absolutely no choice in your care.  Its either you do what they want you to do or you get no care at all.  One thing I know is with my pregnancy, labor, and delivery I want choices.  So I will be changing my plan but I still want to explain what they have done for me so far under the plan I am currently on.
  I called to make my first appointment and hopefully get my first prenatal visit.  I was told I could not make an appointment until I did a walk-in (which at could do at anytime without an appt), and took a military provided pregnancy test.  I thought ok I could do that, but I had to wait until a day that my nausea wasn't at its worst.  I went in and took the pee test and was told it would take 5 minutest to get the results back, so I waited.  I also asked while I was there if I could make my first prenatal appointment after my results came back.  That is when I was told before I could make my first prenatal appointment I had to take a 3 hour First Time Parent class.  It was told to me that this class was mandatory in order to make my first prenatal appointment.  So I asked what exactly would take place in this 3 hour class and explained I would never be able to make it through a 3 hour class with the extreme nausea I was experiencing.  They told me that the class would introduce me to the place I would be giving birth, what each appointment would include for the next 9 months, and the facilities I would be visiting during these visits.  Now me taking this class made absolutely NO sense.  #1 I am too nauseous and sick to take a 3 hour class.  #2 I am giving birth in a non military healthcare system in Maryland so I need no introduction to their labor facility as I will not be using it.  #3 I also do not need introduction to 9 months worth of how they proceed with there appointment because I move back to Maryland very soon and would likely only have 1 appointment in their facility.  You would think that they would understand that I needed to see a doctor immediately for my nausea and violent consistent vomiting. How hard is it to understand that I did not need their 3 hour course, taking it would make no sense, and that I needed to see a doctor immediately?  But nope they told me I still had to take the 3 hour New Parent Class before I could make my first prenatal appointment and that they would try to fit me in that day so that they could treat my nausea.  All I wanted was my nausea treated at that time, so that worked for me, and I would figure out the rest later. They made me wait there for almost 2 hours before telling me well they are over booked and could not fit me in for a quick appointment and that I should either go to the ER or make an appointment the following day to treat my nausea.
  So I called to make the appointment for my nausea the following day (I didn't want to go to the ER for something so simple), one thing at a time I thought.  I would deal with what I would do about getting around that stupid required class once I dealt with my nausea.  Once I called they then said that I couldn't even make an appointment for my nausea since it was related to pregnancy and that before I could make that appointment I had to first take the 3 hour class. Otherwise I should just go to the ER.  I have always thought the ER is for emergencies, broken bones, heart attacks, strokes, or other health problems that occur after hours.  But for some reason they thought I needed to go to the ER regardless and I was not allowed to make any type of pregnancy related appointment until I took that 3 hour class.  So at first I tried to wait out the nausea hoping it would get better because I thought going to the ER did not make any sense when they could just make me a quick doctors appointment.  My nausea never eased up and only got worse and worse.  I lost 5 pounds and was clearly getting really dehydrated.  So finally yesterday when I was approximately 7 weeks and 5 days, I drove 45 minutes to the military ER. 
  They prescribed me with Ondansetron (Zofran 4MG) for my nausea and vitamin B-6.  Today I am still nauseous, have very little energy,  and weak but I no longer vomit and I am no where near as sick as I used to be.  Thank God for that.  But I am still trying to change my insurance plan and I am very disappointed in the military healthcare system.  I plan to change it to Tricare Standard which means there will be a lot of cost sharing, I will end up having a lot of out of pocket expenses, but that is absolutely worth it if I can avoid the BULLSHIT!