On Sunday March 5, 2023, I gave birth to my beautiful daughter. We were 41 weeks and 3 days and we'd had no complications. Our pregnancy was "text-book." I began feeling ill the evening of Monday March 6, but assumed it was hunger related. Over the course of the night, I continued to feel ill but my blood pressure and vitals were normal so I was given nausea medication and ultimately allowed to go home on Tuesday March 7.

I progressively got worse once I was home and was ultimately readmitted to the hospital on Wednesday March 8, Thursday March 9 (via ambulance), and Sunday March 12. On Sunday March 12, I had been discharged less than 24 hours before and I was experiencing extreme nausea, an extreme headache, and stroke-range blood pressures. We narrowly made it. Less than an hour after I arriving at the hospital, I stopped responding to prompts and experienced the first of two eclamptic seizures. I spent two days in the ICU and all said, I spent the first two weeks of my daughter's life in the hospital.

I walk so my daughter does not have the same experience that I did. I walk as a reminder to doctors and mothers that preeclampsia (and eclampsia!) happens postpartum too.