Real help: money, work and support
Most of what follows is free, and almost none of it is offered to you unless you ask. The first entry is the one to use tonight if you only use one.
The HER Foundation: start here
The Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation is the main group for this illness. It is the rare one that treats the partner and family as people who need help too, not just as the patient's ride.
- HER Crisis Warmline: call or text +1 971-435-7444. For urgent questions when you do not know what to do next. HER says they usually call back within 24 hours, so it is not for an emergency happening this minute, but it is a real person who knows this illness. You can use it as the supporter, not only as the patient.
- Get Help Now. HER's front door for someone in it right now. hyperemesis.org/get-help-now
- Written for the supporter, not the patient: a Survival Guide for Family & Friends, How to Help Her (with separate sections for partners, children, grandparents and friends), a How to Cope page, and a Hospitalization Guide. There is also a caregiver support group for the people doing the supporting.
- Case consultation with a clinician who knows HG. HER's clinicians volunteer their time; the suggested donation is $25 per 15 minutes and a typical consult runs 30 to 60 minutes. Worth knowing about when local care has stalled. Request via Get Help Now
- Family & Friends, including a crisis-support section. Written for you, not for her. Crisis support for family · the whole Family & Friends area
- The Professional Referral Network: clinicians who actually know HG. This is the answer when your own doctor is dismissing her. Find a provider who knows HG
- Volunteer network: people who have been through HG and will talk to you. Find a volunteer
- Support groups for mothers and families. Support groups
- The HELP Score: HER's tool for tracking severity objectively over time. Useful precisely because it turns "she's really struggling" into something a clinician can trend. HELP Score
- Is it morning sickness or HG? HER's own comparison, useful for relatives who think she is exaggerating. Morning sickness or HG?
- General enquiries: [email protected]
If either of you is in crisis
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 (US), any hour. Research on HG reports that roughly 7% of women experience regular suicidal ideation, and difficulty getting recommended care is named as a risk factor. If she says anything in that direction, take it seriously and do not leave her alone. This line is for you as well.
- Her OB or midwife's after-hours line. Programme it into both your phones now, before you need it at 3am, and put it on the fridge.
What other families say
These are not medical guidance. They are what women with HG, and the people looking after them, reported on the Mumsnet pregnancy forums, read 2026-08-29 to 2026-08-31. The site says which is which, so you can tell "HER Foundation says" from "one woman found". Anything about medicine or a home test is left off this list on purpose.
- Two women independently ate each meal in two sittings: expect the first half to come back up, then keep the second half down, small and bland.
- One line, learned the hard way: do not eat rice. It clumps and is painful to bring up. Others chew everything very thoroughly for the same reason, because it is coming back up.
- Fluid in food, when drinking is impossible. Ice pops and lollies, watermelon, melon, lettuce. Four separate posters; watermelon was called a lifesaver.
- Cold, full-sugar fizzy drinks, because plain water was "revolting". Three posters. One woman's entire intake for a stretch was ice-cold Sprite and a couple of sweets an hour. Reported as what kept them going, not as nutrition advice.
- Beige food, and drop the healthy-pregnancy rules. Six or more posters: dry cornflakes, unbuttered toast, ready salted crisps, rich tea biscuits, crackers, bananas, chips, plain noodles. Their words: eat whatever you are fancying, it is better than nothing. One reframe: Anything you can mindlessly eat is easier than anything where you pay attention to the food.
- Buy sick bags in bulk online and keep them everywhere. Named as a tip, and exactly the job a partner can do without being asked.
- The question the partner should never ask: "is it just bad morning sickness?" Said with feeling by more than one woman. It lands as dismissal.
- Rest is the treatment, and pushing through made it worse. Looking back, I wish I'd tried not to push through as much as I did. Being signed off work helped a lot. HER Foundation says the same about activity; the partner's job is to take things off her, not to encourage her up.
- She may wait too long to go in because she cannot face going. I'm definitely guilty of waiting too long to seek help because I just can't face going. That is a specific job: be the one who makes the call.
- Peer support was named, four times, as the thing that got people through. Pregnancy Sickness Support's peer service in the UK, and the large online HG communities. HER Foundation's own routes are at the top of this page.
Money and work: ask before you are desperate
HER Foundation names lost money as part of HG's damage: medical costs on one side, lost income on the other, often while she cannot work for months. These are the doors worth trying early, because they all take time.
- Get it documented as a medical condition, in writing, early. Almost every protection below depends on paperwork from her clinician that exists before you need it. Ask at the next appointment even if you are not ready to use it.
- FMLA (US): job-protected unpaid leave for a serious health condition, including for a spouse caring for one. It has employer-size and tenure tests, so check eligibility rather than assuming. dol.gov: FMLA · 1-866-487-2365
- Short-term disability, if she has it through work or a state programme. This is the one that most often replaces actual income, and it is frequently forgotten until too late. Ask HR what exists and what the filing deadline is.
- Ask the hospital for financial assistance and an itemised bill. Non-profit hospitals in the US are required to have written financial-assistance policies. Ask for the policy by name, and ask before paying.
- WIC (US), for pregnant people: food support and nutrition help, with income limits that are higher than most families assume. fns.usda.gov/wic
- 2-1-1: dial 211 in the US for utilities, food, rent and local help of any kind.
The pattern, wherever you live
Four doors exist almost everywhere. Her clinical team (and a second opinion if they are not listening), and a charity for this one illness (HER Foundation, or Pregnancy Sickness Support in the UK). Then job protection, and the hospital's own financial-assistance office. Finding the doors is the hard part. That is what this page is for.
Links verified in a browser August 2026. Benefit rules and who qualifies change; the groups themselves always have the current picture.