Sick baby makes mom ill

Maddison Blockley, 31, suffers from a rare phobia of sickness. Pic/Maddie Blockley

Maddison Blockley, mother to three-year old Amelie Smout, can't even go near her toddler when Amelie is unwell. Blockley has emetophobia, the extreme fear of vomiting. "I'd rather die than throw up," says the 28-year old from Staffordshire, England.

The mental health nurse could not figure out what was wrong with her until May 2019, when she heard of the rare disease for the first time. "I knew I was scared of sick [vomit], but I could never piece together why or what was actually wrong with me," she says. "Since knowing I have emetophobia, it has helped me start looking at ways I can deal with it."

Blockley said her spouse, 29-year-old Jack Smout, didn't understand it at first, but has since then been able to wrap his head around it. "It's been really difficult for my husband to deal with it," she says.

At first, Blockley started to avoid things that had the potential to make her sick, and experimented with vegetarianism to avoid eating meat that could upset her stomach. "I was washing my hands so much that they would scald as the water was too hot," she says. "To my mind that was the way to get rid of germs." Blockley developed several coping mechanisms over the ages. "I felt so misunderstood," she says, "as the things the therapists said just didn't apply to me."

When her toddler daughter got sick, she felt she couldn't bear to be near her. "It killed me that I couldn't hold her hand or be in the room with her for long. I felt awful as she said: ‘Don't you love me because I'm poorly?' It crushed my heart. The last thing I wanted to do was to make her think I didn't love her," says the heart-broken mother.

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