As the hours pass, my internal narrator begins to sound a little like Good Night Moon. Goodbye laundry. Goodbye clock. Goodbye daughter wearing one yellow sock

I find out on Motzaei Pesach, in the midst of life overflowing all around me. Hampers stuffed to the brim, ripped tinfoil piled up in loose garbage bags, wired children running barefoot through the house.

The test reads undoubtedly positive.

I tremble as my brain wrestles with the two sides of this equation. Terror and happiness wrangle. Logic appears, late and aloof, reminding me what this moment is supposed to look like. Fairytale bliss. Joy and violins, bunny rabbits that sing, pink tulle dreams and that gauzy glittering pregnancy glow.

But I already know there will be none of that. I’ve read this story before; it’s dark.

I let myself luxuriate in happily-ever-after for a second. I want you, I think loudly enough for the negligible bundle of cells within to hear it. It’s a hard truth that will soon grow shapeless and soggy around the edges. I think it loudly now because I know I won’t be thinking it soon.

I stare into the garbage for a moment as I brace myself for impact; a roll of toilet paper drowned before its time, an empty shampoo bottle, a toddler’s yellow sock. And then the world begins to spin.

Slowly at first, like a dryer cycle. Wringing out all the excess in my life, faster and faster until all that’s left is me in the center. As the hours pass, my internal narrator begins to sound a little like Good Night Moon. Goodbye laundry. Goodbye clock. Goodbye daughter wearing one yellow sock.

Evening comes and I grow dizzier. I can feel the ground shifting, feel the earth yawning beneath me. My hormones prepare themselves for war; gathering cudgels and lances and broadswords to be used against me, their battle cry sends a frantic wave of nausea rolling through me.

I shut off my phone, steal a final glance at my children playing in the backyard. Goodbye children. Goodbye swings. Goodbye all you earthly things. The house phone rings, my husband answers. “She can’t talk right now. No.… she can’t call you back… um… for a long time.”

And so it begins.

Bring bucket. Vomit. Lots of vomit.

I’m tripping now. Falling through the rabbit-hole, chasing the hare that rocked in the chair in Goodnight Moon, wearing a clock and one yellow sock.

Welcome to Wonderland.

A hand thrusts an apple in my direction. Eat me. I eat. I vomit. I shrink. Smaller, smaller. Water. Drink me! I drink. I vomit. I grow. I grow so fast that in two weeks I age 1,000 years.

At the hospital, dark eyes widen, tongues tsk and mutter while explaining  that Obstetrics is full. I am stuffed in Urology where I languish for days, throwing up into clear plastic bags provided by maintenance staff, then sent home with instructions to stop vomiting. I can’t. The man who drops off the homecare IVs to my house gives me sidelong glances as he guides my husband on how to change the IV bags for his mother.

His. Mother.

I am 29 years old. I look like I’m 70. Unceasing vomit. I shrink more. Shrink until I blend in with the bed that is not just a bed but a universe; a prison and fortress in one. I shrink and shrink until I am nothing.

Unceasing vomit. I shrink more. Shrink until I blend in with the bed that is not just a bed but a universe; a prison and fortress in one. I shrink and shrink until I am nothing.

My bedroom is a tomb and I’m hermetically sealed inside. I have four kids and a husband who live beyond the door in a parallel universe that I can no longer access. I see nothing and hear everything. The sound of angels dropping off dinner for my family every night. Babysitters sticking Band-Aids on skinned knees, twisting blonde curls into ponytails, reading bedtime stories. On this journey to Motherhood I’ve been completely stripped of Motherhood.

My esophagus is a branding iron, blazing hot, simmering inside me. My throat is raw from the retching, tired of fighting back as my body tries to expel it. Every moment of every day lasts approximately one million years. There is no past, no future, just this moment right now that consists of: one pink “sickness” bucket, the pillow under my head, the hook on the wall, the bag of medications that don’t work hanging from the hook on the wall, my husbands’ brass collar stay on the nightstand, and a pile of undershirts on the dresser.

Nothing moves in this catacomb for four months. The laws of nature are obsolete; theorems are extraneous here, wisps from a bygone era. Time moves neither forward nor backward but grows stale and falls off in chunks before my eyes. Here I must shrivel before I can swell. Here, everything that goes down must come up.

At seven weeks there are minor signs that something is wrong, that the pregnancy may not be viable. The I want you I had thought so loudly weeks before comes hissing through me, digging its talons into my heart. It occurs to me then that one cannot think loudly. You either think. Or you don’t think. Either way it’s a soundless act. Maybe I never thought it at all. I can no longer see truth through the pain.

I throw up from the sound of the door opening. The sight of food. Birds chirping. Rolling over. Sneezing, breathing, being. The vibrations from my vocal chords are unbearable so I stop speaking completely. The door hinge creaks and I gag. The sound of a child laughing has me retching violently, my body writhing in pain.

I throw up from my empty stomach, then throw up everything I try to put in it. I throw up as the EMT walks in. As he pokes and prods to find a vein. I throw up from the feeling of the intravenous liquid coursing through my veins. I know I need a hospital, but I already have the drugs they’ll give me, already know the name of this beast: hyperemesis gravidarum. I think I’ll die trying to get there.

My eyes sink into themselves and my skin grows pasty pale and I don’t even care because I cannot care and all of this is supposed to be a fairy tale anyway, and it is, isn’t it? Straight out of the Brothers Grimm.

My mother flies in from across the earth. I think she’s here to say goodbye, her mouth a firm straight line.

“They can put a man on the moon but they can’t cure this,” she mumbles.

Vomit.

“I’m gonna die.” I tell her. It’s the longest sentence I’ve said in weeks.

“You’re not gonna die.” She is adamant but her eyes flicker and I wonder if they harbor some doubt.

My body hibernates. Everything atrophies. I don’t walk, I don’t sit up. It takes many minutes to gather the strength to roll over. The nausea is so intense that it physically hurts, like a swelling sore between the eyes, and there is nothing in the world that can quell it. The isolation is absolute; I have zero communication with the outside world for months.

There is a window in my room. For weeks I envision it swinging open, filling my nostrils with particles from the other side. When I climbed into bed months ago, the air had been heavy with spring, jasmine dew and honeysuckle. I crave a piece of that paradise but can’t formulate the words, can’t expend the energy to vocalize my request.

Everest, only a few feet from my head.

Weeks go by, my veins are collapsing, too many IVs, too much dehydration. I dig into myself, muster some strength, and make my throaty entreaty.

“Window.”

“You want me to open it?” my husband asks simply.

I blink. Vomit. Nod. He moves toward the window, yanks it open. Air floods my crypt. We are deep into a Mediterranean summer and I can smell the earth, as parched as I am, its face cracked and dry and desiccated geraniums mingling with a million smoldering barbeques, firework fairy dust and snow cones melting into paper and tiny specks of gnat wings clinging to sticky popsicle sticks, saltwater seashells beneath sunburned toes, the fading sound of an ice cream truck and discarded cigarette butts rammed into the walls of sandcastles, aloe smeared on peeling skin and the embers of the setting sun embracing that one last firefly.

The dying summer smells so violently of life, I vomit.

“Close it.”

I cry into my pillow.

One night, I think it’s the end. How long can a person live without food? My heart is galloping, popping, fluttering and racing, slowing then starting over. I ride the roller coaster up and down, round and round, my crinkled eyes squeezed shut in agony.

I’m tired. So tired. I make peace then. I just want all of it to end.

Somehow, I wake. Shock! Vomit.

And then things change. Not suddenly, but in tiny increments. Improvement creeps up on me. I emerge, a memory of myself, my body full of tiny spider cracks like a smashed windshield. I am together — but barely. As if the slightest touch might shatter me into a million pieces.

My time in solitary casts shadows where they shouldn’t be. I am discombobulated. Unsure of myself and my ability to be a mother, wife, human. Unsure if I’ll ever be able to write a coherent sentence again. I’ve spent so long in Wonderland I don’t know how to live in reality anymore.

I take tentative steps outside, find the universe to be far more pungent, far harsher, and far more beautiful than I remembered it to be. It takes me a long time to relearn basic skills. Talk on the phone. Pick up groceries. Laugh. Leaving my bed takes more strength then I could have ever imagined.

I meet people who are genuinely glad to see me but cannot possibly fathom where I’ve been.

“Ohmigoshhhh. You lost so much weight. You look amaaaaazing. I also had morning sickness with some of mine, it’s the worst. I could barely make dinner!”

My tongue goes numb and I nod for lack of a better option, make a sort of hum with my throat in response, though I have a sudden urge to explain that actually, it wasn’t morning sickness. That actually I was buried alive and I had to claw my way out and I am still shocked that I survived.

“I knowwwww,” I say instead, matching her whiney tone. “Seriously the worst.”

“Did you try Seabands? The bracelet thingies?”

I blink. “No.”

She gives a little cluck with her tongue. “Well, that was the problem. You should have tried Seabands. They’re a total game changer.”

I don’t even bother trying to explain.

When he comes, he is shockingly perfect. I had spent so long surviving I hadn’t really thought of him as a him. But now he’s here and they want me to say it was worth it. Wide expectant eyes, as if daring me to deny it.

Of course it was worth it.

But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

I am changed. I went to sleep one night, resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going to wake up the next morning. I made peace with death, and you cannot make peace with death and walk away the same person.

And here’s the thing. This piece took me a year to write because the memories were still blistering hot and too gargantuan to put into words. I couldn’t fathom breaking down the enormity of it all into mere letters. And now that I’ve written it, I find it’s still lacking. Rough around the edges, missing that glittering sheen that encases the classic personal essay.

I wish I could give over some brilliant words of advice. But the truth is, I don’t have any chizuk for all you HG sufferers out there. I have no way to make it better. I can only say that I’ve been there, and I know the depths of your despair, I know the pit is deeper than all the words in the world, that if I spent the next ten years rewriting this essay I still wouldn’t be able to fully capture the agony of opening your eyes in the morning when you are suffering from HG.

I also know that as hard as it is to believe this right now, one day it will be over. One day there will be a bundle to whisper fairytales to in the moonlight.

You want a story, my tiny gorgeous baby boy? Here you go. It may not be very enchanting; its magic lies in the fact that it’s ours.

Once upon a time you were a decision to live. Once upon a time I almost died for you and I regret none of it. You were a calculation; you are an equation impossible to calculate, you are undoubtedly positive. The misery doesn’t cancel out the happiness and you are not a math problem, my prince charming. Bringing you here has changed me and I would do it again for you in a second. You transformed my heart in a million ways; carrying you weakened it; loving you has strengthened it. I gained far more than I lost and I will never be the same, and that’s okay. The end. You were worth it. The beginning.

I love you.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 611)