When I came back to my senses, I turned to the paramedic and whispered, “Did I say something about terminating the pregnancy?” My voice cracked. “Please … don’t judge me.” My mother was beside me as they wheeled me into the emergency room, and I was sick with worry that she’d heard me. That she’d be ashamed. But mostly, I was terrified they’d send me home. Again. That I wasn’t sick enough. That I was just another hormonal woman with a flair for drama.

This was week five of what I now know is hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), a condition where pregnancy nausea and vomiting go full Tarantino. I’d already been to the emergency department five times in two weeks. No diagnosis. Just a rinse-and-repeat routine: some staring down the tiles while holding a tie-and-twist vomit bag, some pokes and wriggles to find my dehydrated veins, some fluids and the awkward assurance that “baby is like a parasite, it will take everything it needs”. As if maternal suffering were a footnote. As if I were the side salad to the main course of foetal development.

Among family members, the chorus was louder. Vomiting seven or eight times a day is, apparently, normal. “You should be grateful” and “There’s a reason God placed heaven under the feet of the mother.” Apparently, martyrdom is the price of admission.

I started to believe them. Maybe I was weak. Maybe I was exaggerating. Maybe I was failing at the one thing my body was biologically designed to do.

But that night, on a stretcher, my body gave out. I couldn’t stand. My head was splitting. I hadn’t kept down food or water in four days. I’d already vomited four times that day – but not enough, I thought, to justify calling an ambulance and clogging up ED yet again. The debate in my head was about whether I was an impostor or someone genuinely suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum (HG).

But then I came across an

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