I know what Kate is going through

Niamh O’Connell knows only too well what the Duchess of Cambridge is going through right now because when she became pregnant with her daughter Kayla (now 16 months), she spent the following nine months struggling to eat or drink anything without vomiting and even ended up in casualty with a ruptured stomach.

Like Kate Middleton, the 35-year-old suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, or severe morning sickness, which started when she was eight weeks pregnant and continued right up to the birth of her baby.

“I began to feel nauseous when I was about seven weeks pregnant and a week later started vomiting a lot,” she recalls. “As it was my first baby, I presumed this was what morning sickness was all about and tried to get on with it as best I could. But as time went on I got progressively worse. I was vomiting up to 15 times a day and the effect of the retching felt like there was a sharp blade going from my stomach all the way up to my throat. By the time I had reached 11 weeks, I felt so sick that I couldn’t even stand up.