Best of 2025: Don’t call it morning sickness: ‘At times in my pregnancy I wondered if this was death coming for me’

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

Each week for the rest of December we will publish some of our favourite audio long reads of 2025, in case you missed them, with an introduction from the editorial team to explain why we’ve chosen it. From July: the Victorians called it ‘pernicious vomiting of pregnancy’, but modern medicine has offered no end to the torture of hyperemesis gravidarum – until now By Abi Stephenson. Read by Nicolette Chin. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The Guardian.
0:11.1	Hello, my name is Claire Longrigg, and I'm the deputy editor of the Guardian Longreed.
0:16.7	This December, we wanted to bring you our top picks of the year from the audio long read.
0:22.3	One of the most original pieces we've run this year is a memoir by Abby Stevenson
0:27.0	about extreme pregnancy sickness or hyper-emesis gravidarum,
0:33.0	called Don't Call it Morning Sickness.
0:36.4	At times in my pregnancy, I wondered if this was death coming for me.
0:42.1	Abby, who suffered from this condition, describes in blistering detail what it's like to vomit
0:47.1	unstoppably for nine months. As the piece makes clear, this is nothing like the mild, nausea and
0:53.9	metallic taste that a lot of women complain of in pregnancy.
0:57.0	Extreme pregnancy sickness, which sounds like the setup of a bad taste comedy sketch, is so terrible that women have taken desperate measures to make it stop.
1:08.0	Abby describes how her midwife assured her there was nothing to worry about,
1:12.9	baby would be fine.
1:14.8	Even though she couldn't keep a sip of water down,
1:17.1	they told her with maddening condescension that she mustn't fuss.
1:22.3	This piece takes a surprising turn when Abby discovers that the Victorians,
1:27.4	who you'd expect to be rather severe
1:28.9	on their female patients, took the condition more seriously than we do today, trying out some
1:34.9	ingenious and some, frankly, appalling treatments. She also comes across new research that shows
1:41.1	the condition may, in fact, be harmful to a baby's development.
1:46.2	This story really takes the reader on a journey, starting with a florid puking jag,
1:51.9	and by way of a richly informative study of the treatment of women in pregnancy,
	...

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