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Bearing the Unbearable:

In Tragedy’s Wake, Author Helps Ill Pregnant Moms Find Healing & Hope

by Dawn Eden 

“Eat crackers and drink ginger ale.”

It’s the time-honored advice doctors give pregnant women suffering from morning sickness. Most of the time it works well enough; the sickness is manageable and disappears within six weeks. But what if it doesn’t?

Alarmingly, for tens of thousands of pregnant women throughout America every year, it doesn’t go away. Worse still, in addition to becoming dangerously ill for months into their pregnancies, they are often under pressure from their doctor, insurance company or even well-meaning family and friends to “do something” about it – abort their unborn children.

In 1996, Ashli Foshee McCall, 25 years old, married and pregnant with her first child, was one of those women who suffer from hyperemesis gravidarum (HG). According to the Hyperemesis Education & Research Foundation, an estimated 39,000 HG sufferers are hospitalized each year (many more suffer without hospitalization), and at least 10 percent of pregnancies complicated by HG end in abortion.

For McCall, after months of terrible suffering that had her crying out in agony and even hallucinating from the effects of electrolyte imbalance, she took her doctor’s advice and did the only thing she thought she could do to save her own life: She aborted her child in the second trimester.

Only afterwards, when she was well enough to do in-depth research – not easy in those days before most medical studies were on the Internet – did McCall find out the truth: With the right treatment, women can get relief from the sufferings of HG and give birth to healthy children.

McCall continued researching the disease for ten years, during which time she underwent three more pregnancies – one miscarriage, two live births – all with HG. (Women who have the illness during one pregnancy commonly suffer it during subsequent ones as well.) The result is her self-published book “Beyond Morning Sickness,” the first-ever patient’s guide to HG, and its companion Web site BeyondMorningSickness.com.

Thanks in part to exposure on Paula Zahn’s CNN show – on which McCall told why her abortion was the “biggest mistake” of her life – “Beyond Morning Sickness” has brought hope into the lives of women who were racked by grave illness and fear. On the book’s Amazon page, the 20 reviews by customers tell largely similar stories: Women who faced misunderstanding from medical professionals and loved ones, who thought they had no chance of ever having a healthy baby, now feel optimism as well as relief that they are not alone.
“For once I feel like someone understands what I go through,” writes Amazon customer reviewer Chasity Bowling. “I am 13 weeks pregnant and still battling every day.”

Last May, “Beyond Morning Sickness” reader Amy Maughan marked the first birthday of her son Cayman with a grateful thank-you to McCall on her blog.

“It's strange how the hardest physical thing I've ever done required no movement at all,” she observed. “Some people run marathons, jump from planes, lift cars, climb Everest. Not me. I laid in bed. 100% immobilized by the suffering that is HG. ... (McCall’s) book was my lifeline during this time. And Ashli herself sent several personal emails to encourage me through the darkest days. She will never know the difference she made for me in my little corner of the world.”

For McCall, responses like Maughan’s – as well as the hundreds of other readers who have thanked her, many sending photos of their children – help her heal in the wake of the pain and grief she endured in her battles with HG.

“Tremendous suffering has serious potential because God is good,” she wrote me in an e-mail. “Every life positively impacted by the short existence of one fragile little child serves as a powerful and humbling reminder that there was always purpose in the agony.” 

In addition to the 700 copies of “Beyond Morning Sickness” that she has sold through Amazon, McCall has donated 1,500 copies, mostly to obstetricians’ and gynecologists’ offices.

The medical content of the book was reviewed and edited by board-certified OB/GYN Jeffrey Wall M.D., medical director for the Women’s Health and Wellness Center at the Truman Medical Centers, University of Missouri at Kansas City Medical School.

In the foreword, he writes, “This book is a step in the direction of understanding a horrible condition. The first time I read it I was astonished at the depth of information it contained.”

Currently, McCall, aided by a volunteer webmaster and volunteer counselors to help HG sufferers who contact her through her Web site, is weighing whether to form a nonprofit to expand her outreach. Her dream, she says, is to send a copy of “Beyond Morning Sickness,” as well as a companion book she wrote to help young children cope with their mother’s illness, to every OB/GYN in the country, and to have both books translated into other languages.

But “no matter what happens,” she says, “we will continue to distribute free books and offer advice and counseling through the Web site.”

 

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)