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 article that validated what I’d suspected all along: diagnosis can be tricky. Featuring a study of 300 Australians with severe nausea, it said HG leads to poor quality of life and negatively affects social, occupational and domestic functioning. So much so that more than half considered terminating their pregnancy. Ninety per cent considered not having more children. Only half found commonly used anti-nausea treatments effective.

The article reflected my bed-ridden days, where I was fully reliant on my mother to do basic chores, unresponsive to oral antiemetics and living in a fog of dehydration and dread. HG doesn’t just affect your stomach, it hijacks your entire life.

The first real validation came from a pathologist who said, “Oh, sounds like that thing Princess Kate had.” Not because it was a royal condition, but because I felt like someone understood.

HG is a debilitating condition routinely dismissed as “just morning sickness” because as many as 80% of pregnant women experience some form of nausea and vomiting. But HG is not a spectrum, it’s a cliff. And once you fall off it, there’s no soft landing.

I learned HG isn’t just bad luck – it can run in families. Specific gene variants linked to appetite regulation, inflammation and placental development may help explain why some bodies react this way to pregnancy. I ticked every box: motion sickness, migraines and a family tree full of women who “just got on with it”. But instead of this being seen as biological vulnerability, I framed it as personal failure. I wasn’t sick – I was soft.

Historically, treatments for HG ranged from mercury and morphine to electric shock and radiotherapy. One physician even injected his patient with her husband’s blood. By the 1960s, the medical enthusiasm fizzled out – just as women’s rights were gaining traction. Funny, isn’t it? Motherhood was too sacred to be touched, even by science.

As someone navigating HG while living in Australia, with family ties across multiple cultures, I’ve been struck by the universality of the minimisation. There’s a cross-cultural rush to romanticise motherhood while silencing its pain. It’s not that people mean to be cruel. The dismissal of HG isn’t usually malicious – it’s ambient. It seeps in through the cracks of culture, religion, medicine and memory. It’s the grandmother who says “We all went through it”, the friend who chirps “You’ll forget once you have the kid”, the nurse who shrugs “Baby gets everything it needs” and sends you home with a pamphlet and a pat on the back. It’s the glorification of motherhood as divine suffering, where pain is proof of love and silence is strength. And when that narrative becomes gospel, HG becomes invisible.

And the freakiest betrayal? It’s from women themselves. Again, it’s not conscious. Like all good bias, it’s baked in. We grow up believing our bodies are meant to suffer. And this is what stands behind the lag in medical understanding and public consciousness. HG lacks concrete diagnostic protocols, consistent care pathways and financial investment in effective treatments.

I now have a hospital management plan and I’ve successfully shooed away any termination ideations. I’m waiting eagerly for the baby to be out and the much-promised “this will pass, and your memories will fade” to arrive. There will almost certainly not be a second pregnancy, given the recurrence risk of about 24%.

I’m writing this hoping that a few more people will learn about the condition, fostering compassion and community consciousness about the silent pains of motherhood. Fourteen weeks into pregnancy, I fear what else there is about motherhood that I don’t know and will learn the hard way.

Generations of women have quietly suffered and survived. Some died. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

• In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.

• Dr Intifar Chowdhury is a youth researcher and a lecturer in government at Flinders University