Women who suffer horrible morning sickness could be more likely to give birth to a baby girl.
Women who suffer horrible morning sickness could be more likely to give birth to a baby girl. Extreme morning sickness – hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) – can be so severe that women suffering with it can be sick up to 50 times a day. Developing HG during pregnancy could also indicate that you’re not about to have a son.
That’s according to a study of 1.65million pregnancies in Sweden. Researcher, Lena Edlund, and her team at Colombia University in New York found that women who have HG are less likely to give birth to sons. In fact, 56% of those with HG had baby girls.
‘Normally, slightly more boys than girls are born, we don’t quite know why that is,’ Edlund said. On top of this, the study also concluded that ‘less well-educated’ women are more likely to develop HG in pregnancy.
The condition is far more severe than just morning sickness, with some women left bedbound or referred to hospital because of dehydration.
Many mums-to-be with the condition find it almost impossible to eat or drink without retching and can lose up to 10∞ of their body weight during pregnancy.
The Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, famously suffered with HG during both her pregnancies and was admitted to hospital ahead of the birth of Prince George.
Fortunately HG is quite rare, only appearing in one in ever 100 pregnancies each year.
