“Have a ginger biscuit.”
From six weeks pregnant, I began suffering relentless nausea and was being sick upwards of twenty times a day, from the moment I woke until I finally fell asleep, exhausted and empty. I didn’t understand what was happening to my body, and I certainly didn’t know what Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) was. Even after collapsing in A&E, I was sent home with the same label as everyone else: “just morning sickness.”When someone innocently but ignorantly suggested I “try ginger,” I remember the disbelief. Ginger? When I couldn’t even keep down my own saliva? Would you offer ginger to someone with a heart condition, or to a patient who needed a blood transfusion? Probably not. So why is it considered an acceptable response to a pregnant woman so unwell she’s malnourished, dehydrated, and crying over how she’ll survive another 24 hours, let alone the nine months it takes to grow a small human?
Hyperemesis is a debilitating pregnancy condition far more common than the statistics suggest. It is characterised by relentless nausea, unremitting vomiting, dehydration, substantial weight loss, and malnutrition. It’s being unable to eat or drink normally (or at all), even before the first scan. HG goes far beyond “morning sickness” and, in severe cases, can trigger a mental health crisis.
For decades, cultural narratives, and even some medical advice, have promoted ginger in the form of tea, sweets, biscuits, or supplements as a supposed solution. While it might help mild nausea in typical pregnancy, it does not treat HG. Continuing to promote it as such doesn’t just fail to help; it actively harms. It trivialises suffering, delays critical medical care, and reinforces dismissive attitudes toward a condition that can be life-threatening.
I made it my mission to do better as a midwife: to listen, to recognise, and to advocate for those enduring HG. I’ve met countless women whose experiences mirror my own: scared, trembling, apologising for being “dramatic,” clutching their makeshift sick bowls while being told to sip ginger tea. Every time I hear that advice, I remember lying there, wondering what was happening to me and why I couldn’t seem to cope like everyone else. That guilt is one of the cruellest side effects of this pregnancy-related illness.
Women with HG often cannot keep down food, fluids, or even small amounts of medication. To suggest ginger in that moment isn’t just unhelpful; it’s invalidating. It reduces a serious, debilitating condition to a stereotype of morning queasiness. The result? Increased isolation, shame, and despair, layered on top of physical exhaustion.
Proper care for HG looks like intravenous fluids, anti-sickness medication, nutritional support, and, crucially, compassionate understanding.
Yet if women are told to try ginger, or worse, prescribed it as first-line treatment, they may never reach the care they urgently need. When healthcare providers repeat this advice, the harm multiplies. It signals that women’s suffering is not being taken seriously.
The wellness industry has only deepened this problem, selling the idea that women can “manage” pregnancy illness naturally, as if perseverance and positivity could replace medical treatment. This shifts the blame onto the sufferer and reinforces the false notion that “natural” is always better than clinical intervention. For women with HG, this creates an impossible burden: if ginger is supposed to help, then failure to get better must somehow be their fault.
For those of us who have lived it, ginger is irrelevant at best and insulting at worst. A better message would acknowledge that while ginger may ease mild nausea, hyperemesis is an entirely different condition that requires urgent, professional, and compassionate care. The widespread suggestion of ginger as a cure doesn’t soothe, it silences. It delays lifesaving treatment and perpetuates the idea that women’s suffering in pregnancy is simply something to be endured. As someone who has been both the patient and the professional, I know this: ginger didn’t save me. Being believed did.
It’s time to retire the ginger myth and replace it with a narrative of recognition, urgency, and care that truly heals.
Jemma during her pregnancy, suffering with Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG).
