Pixie Rose
My name is Sierra, I'm a HG survivor and with this I am also a grieving mother. I fell pregnant with my baby in June 2020. I have had previous pregnancies where I suffered pretty severe sickness with all of them but nothing would prepare me for the coming months. By 5 weeks the sickness kicked off, the first few days of it were manageable and then it went downhill from there. 8 weeks came and I was unable to continue to work or do basic tasks, I was vomiting on average 15-20 times a day. I had the inability to keep anything down, I was living off a few spoons of cereal a day.
I went to the doctors and they signed me off work for10 weeks, gave me a prescription for anti nausea medication and told me to eat dry crackers. I prayed every day hoping it'd get better, everyone told me when I hit the 12 week mark it'll ease but it didn't, it progressively got worse and my mental health deteriorated rapidly. I felt isolated, misunderstood, unseen and unheard as I constantly asked my doctor and midwife to help. I told them that I felt like I was dying, starving to death and I asked many times, how can my baby be ok when I'm so sick?
They reasurred me and sent me home with another selection of anti nausea medication. Nothing helped, I continued to lose weight and was put on extra grown scans as baby was slightly small but as time went on baby grew and her size wasn't a concern. I spent every moment I could laying down feeling like death and or sleeping. I counted down the days as they slowly passed. Each week that pasted I got worse and worse, I was at my doctor's every few weeks, they told me I had Hyperemesis gravidarum but did nothing to help, I feel stupid for trusting them now. At 33+5 weeks I woke up and hadn't felt my baby move which was odd, i went to work and left a few hours later as she still hadn't moved. I went home I lay down, nothing. I had a bath, she always moves in the bath, still nothing, I couldn't shake that bone chilling, gut wrenching feeling that something wasn't ok.
I rang my midwife and 15 minutes later we were at the hospital for a check up. That was the night we heard those words no parent wants to hear, those 5 words that changed everything, "I'm sorry there's no heartbeat". Our baby had died, our baby I'd fought so extremely hard for every day, our baby that I so desperately wanted. My heart shattered into a billion pieces and I was thrown into a nightmarish hell.
I had to wait 24 hours until I could be induced, we were sent home with sleeping pills and a pamphlet for your baby has died. We went back the next night to start the induction process, in a ward filled with new mums, I'll never forget hearing newborn babies cry while I was getting ready to have my dead baby. At 4.41pm on the 6th of February 2021 our utterly perfect baby girl Pixie Rose Clement Clarke came into this world silent, 4lb 13oz of pure beauty. Pixie was perfect in every way. We got 3 precious days with her before we said our final goodbye. There was no medical reasons why her heart stopped, it just did.
It wasn't until after losing Pixie died that I began to learn about the HG community, that there were others who experienced it, that it wasn't just me. I realised how severe HG can be, how much strain and pressure it puts on you mentally, physically, emotionally, the grief of loss that comes with it far too often. I've done a huge amount of research since and I believe HG played a part in my Pixie dying. The doctors and midwife gave me no answers as to why I wasn't given the appropriate treatment, they said I should of asked. Which made me feel like I should of known better or advocated for myself and Pixie more, pushed harder but I was so incapable of anything. Knowing what I know now I would never of left the hospital until they started giving me the appropriate treatment.
Suffering HG and losing Pixie has been the hardest thing I've ever had to experience but with the loss I have learnt so much about grief and hg being a survivor. Its also connected me with other mothers from around the world that have had their own HG and loss experience, it's made me feel less alone and more understood.
Forever our Pixie Rose
Forever Pixies mumma
