My struggle with HG forced me to look at suffering in a new way

As told to Esther Kurtz by Rebbetzin Ruthie Halberstadt

When the bombshell of hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), extreme nausea and vomiting of pregnancy, hit me when I was expecting my first child, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I’d never been sick before in my life, and I struggled on every level.

Many people today are familiar with HG. They’ve read about it as some sort of horror condition; maybe they know someone who has it. Going back 20 years, that awareness and knowledge wasn’t there.

When I first experienced the condition, I tried fighting the overwhelming, unrelenting nausea tooth and nail. I couldn’t keep down any food, I got dehydrated and needed hospitalization. That’s the CliffsNotes.

At 27, after two more HG pregnancies, I was done. I couldn’t go through that again. Rabbanim agreed, and I was okay with it. The thought occurred to me though: if I could have a different, more positive experience with the condition, would I do it again? The answer was a resounding yes! I felt I had an achrayus to learn everything I could to see if it was possible to experience the condition more positively.

As a doctor’s daughter, I knew how to look and how to ask, but there were no answers. Modern medicine had no prevention, no cure for this condition.

Off the Beaten Path

I started looking into holistic practices, like acupuncture and guided visualizations, as well as delving deep spiritually, speaking to rabbanim, learning from sources with my husband, Rabbi Ilan Halberstadt, and my father, Rabbi Akiva Tatz, to understand and put myself in a better position if I were to have more children.

When challenges come, people often say, “You have what it takes to get through this.” I say, “Get the help you need to get through it!” Yes, Hashem put you in this particular situation to expand yourself, but that doesn’t mean you have that ability in you “as is,” without requiring help to access it.

I believe a three-pronged approach is necessary to address the complete manifestation of any challenge: practical, emotional, and spiritual.

For me, this is what it looked like:

Practically: how could I set up my life in a way that would allow me to be on bed rest? Think childcare, cleaning help, etc. And medication. There’s a popular idea that medication is too dangerous to use in pregnancy, even for severe HG. But that is wrong: as I document in my book, we now have very effective and very safe medications, some of which can even be used in the first trimester. This is a critically important part of treating HG in the modern world.

Emotionally: Doing holistic work, understanding the mind-body connection, its integration and practicing it through guided visualization, breath work, yoga, and the like.

Spiritual: Asking what the Torah has to say about nisayon, challenge.

We’re not meant to be passive and let a nisayon “happen” to us, as if we’re martyrs. We’re meant to engage, accept, and forge new pathways and modes of being.

While I was down this rabbit hole, people started finding me. “I hear you have difficult pregnancies. I do, too. What helps?”

As I learned and worked on myself, I’d share and suggest useful information with others. For example, I needed to learn how to take care of myself before needing to take care of myself. Most women can relate to that. I preemptively took off from work to recharge before I was desperate for a mental health day. It sounds obvious, like common sense these days, as looking after yourself is all the rage, but few women follow through and do it. Women don’t give themselves permission to do it, but wait, we’ll get to that concept soon.

After about two years of “preparation,” I felt ready to climb my Everest.