and DOES cause considerable mortality in areas of the world where hospitalization or intense medical intervention is not an option. This isn't your casual, ordinary level of "morning sickness"...She has hyperemesis gravidarum and yes, women DO die from this if not treated and face a choice between medications whose safety margins have not been established for the fetus--or in some cases intractable symptoms throughout the pregnancy. Ever been vomiting continuously for a day? A week? 9 months?
LONDON (AP) — While morning sickness in pregnant women is common, the problem the Duchess of Cambridge has been hospitalized with is not.
In a statement Monday, palace officials said she was hospitalized with hyperemesis gravidarum, a potentially dangerous type of morning sickness where vomiting is so severe no food or liquid can be kept down. Palace officials said the duchess was expected to remain hospitalized for several days and would require a period of rest afterwards.
“It’s not unusual for pregnant women to get morning sickness, but when it gets to the point where you’re dehydrated, losing weight or vomiting so much you begin to build up (toxic) products in your blood, that’s a concern,” said Dr. Kecia Gaither, director of maternal fetal medicine at Brookdale University and Medical Center in New York.
The condition is thought to affect about one in 50 pregnant women and tends to be more common in young women, women who are pregnant for the first time, those expecting multiple babies and in non-smokers. Gaither said that fewer than one percent of women with the condition need to be hospitalized.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/03/explainer_why_was_pregnant_duchess_hospitalized/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/05/prue-clarke-on-her-battles-with-kate-middleton-s-illness-hyperemesis-gravidarum.html
The doctor couldn’t guarantee the drug, Zofran, would not harm the baby. Ominously, it usually was prescribed for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. But she also could not guarantee the nausea would stop if I were rehydrated. She couldn’t tell me how long I’d be in the hospital. HG, like morning sickness, eases in most women by 12 weeks, but in some it could last the whole pregnancy. The idea of suffering this nausea another day, let alone another 34 weeks, was untenable. I felt I had no choice. I took the drug.
Zofran pulled me back from the brink. Within an hour of taking it, I felt well enough to eat. I still felt nauseated 24 hours a day, but I was no longer desperate. I lived by the clock. Every four hours as the drug wore off, the nausea heightened again. Eating regularly was essential. All the home remedies for morning sickness—ginger tea, pressure bands—proved useless. Eventually, I got some relief from expensive acupuncture appointments. But it was not covered by insurance. The one consolation was that sickness is a sign of a healthy pregnancy. But I was so miserable, I found it hard to feel joy in that.
It was far too early to tell anyone we were pregnant. Most people wait until 12 weeks, and the risk of miscarriage (one in four pregnancies) has passed. But we had no choice. As Christmas approached, I had to say no to every holiday celebration. As my freelance-journalism deadlines piled up, I had to tell my editors I was struggling to leave my bed.
I found little sympathy. An estimated seven in 10 pregnant women suffer morning sickness. No one I knew had been confined to her bed, nearly incapable of functioning, for weeks on end. People expect you to buck up and deal with it. They offer a constant, insistent advice that what worked for them will work for you. I was just lucky I didn’t have to report to an office every day.
A CNN story at the time reported that a woman had terminated her pregnancy because of morning sickness. Friends were shocked. I had sympathy.
Week 12 came and went with no improvement. A once-niggling background fear that I would be one of the unlucky few who had HG for nine months began to look very real.
http://www.salon.com/1998/10/05/05feature_8/
Bed rest sucks and I should know. I was on it for more than five months of my pregnancy. Four of those months were not what most people think of as bed rest: No doctor prescribed it. Instead, an extreme case of hyperemesis gravidarum (excessive vomiting while pregnant) made me so sick and weak that I was forced to stay in bed. I faced repeated dehydration and countless hospital trips. I couldn’t eat because I’d throw up, but at the same time I was hungry. I lay awake many nights quite literally starving, but too scared to eat. After six weeks of that, I was put on a 24-hour I.V., which essentially confined me to bed for two and a half more months. I could eat and drink almost nothing, and every distraction, from reading to listening to music was too much. Even the alarm clock display was too bright to bear.
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