Brave:

Adjective: ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage.

Verb: endure or face (unpleasant conditions or behavior) without showing fear.

Everyone has their own special pregnancy journey. We kept our pregnancy journey very private. Even those closest to us did not know we were trying to conceive.  We had been seeing the best fertility team in our state. Our doctor assured us that a child was in the cards for us. For a year I held onto his words - though every blood draw, medical test, hormone injection, every negative pregnancy test, I held on to that hope that I’d see that little pink plus sign one day. 

I would jokingly say to my husband through our whole journey that I needed to be “brave”, that our baby needed me to be brave. Brave to stand in my kitchen each night and give myself hormone injections, brave to show up everyday even if I wasn’t feeling well from this process, brave to go through procedures to find out what hurtles we may be facing, brave to advocate for myself if I felt something wasn’t right, brave to face any potential risks to my health, brave to cope with the idea that our journey could not have a fairy tale ending. What if I couldn’t give my husband a child? What if I never hear someone call me mama? As a woman, so many of these thoughts go through your head and can bring you to your knees daily during a fertility journey.

We found out we were pregnant on March 4th 2024. I very unexpectedly saw that little pink plus sign we had been praying for. In fact, I saw about 4 or 5 pink plus signs because I could not believe just one test. We were over joyed, bursting at the seams to tell our loved ones. We would later find out it was a boy. We would name him Everett, meaning “brave”. Little did I know how ironic that name choice would be. 

We had, what I thought, was a best case scenario pregnancy. I left every check up with a gold star, perfect health for myself and the baby. I did not experience many symptoms that women typically experience. Overall I was lucky enough to get to enjoy my pregnancy. Prior to pregnancy I had slighly high blood pressure and was on a low dose of medicine for about a decade. I remained on pregnancy safe blood pressure meds through the entire pregnancy and my blood pressure remained well maintained. 

One day at 34 weeks, I said to my husband, “the baby isn’t moving as much today, I think I may just call the doctor and see what they say.” The next morning, I called and told the doctor that I felt less movement and he told me to come in and we would check it out. By the time I got to the office, our sweet boy was kicking away and I felt silly for even being there. While there, the doctor took my blood pressure.. 140/90 on the button. He sent me to run some labs just to be safe. 

I casually called my husband, reassured him I was being paranoid and all was fine and I was on my way home to continue working. By 5 PM that day our doctor had called. My liver enzymes were 6 times what they should be and I needed to get to the hospital immediately and I should prepare to deliver tonight. Of course, panic immediately set in. We weren’t ready! We had just had my shower that Sunday prior. It’s a strange and terrifying to feel relatively normal but your body is quietly giving up on you, and the baby you are carrying. 

When we got to the hospital I begged the doctors for alternate options. I made them go through all possibilities, asked all the questions. My blood pressure continued to creep up to 200s/100s. The doctors assured me this situation was quickly becoming critical and our safest option for both myself and the baby would be to deliver immediately. By 7 pm and after weighing all potential risks, we had made the decision to do an emergency c section. At that point, I joke, that my body went into self preservation mode. I don’t remember much after my epidural. I couldn’t deal with the thought of something happening to me, leaving my husband to care for our baby alone, or worse, losing my baby in the process. 

By 11 PM our sweet boy was here. He was immediately whisked away to the NICU as he had some respiratory distress. We spent hours in recovery as my blood pressure struggled to stabilize. I remember little of this as well. 12 hours later, and after fighting with hosptial staff, we were brought to the NICU to see our baby. I immediately fell apart. My sweet boy, hours old, was hooked up to every tube, every machine, alone in an isolet, and visibly struggling to breathe. I wasn’t able to hold him. As a new mom, this gutted me. I remember thinking, “god he is so brave - so little and so new to this world and he’s just figuring it out all on his own!” As he spent the next ten days getting stronger, recieving Surfactin treatments, and learning to eat, I spent those same 10 days trying to get my blood pressure under control, and trying to be brave myself. 

 I was bounced between the special care unit, maternity floor, and finally landing in the PICU. I remember thinking on a constant loop “Why was this happening to us?” “No one I know had a birth story like this!” “ Could I have done something differently to have prevented this?”  I was so traumatized by this experience. I was not allowed to leave the floor unless my blood pressure was under a certain threshold. I was crawling out of my skin wanting to get to my son. There is no worse feeling than giving birth, then not being able to care for your newborn, while also struggling to heal your own body.

 The nurses would sneak me off to see him when possible. The NICU team would take pictures or make crafts and send them up to my hosptial room. Each trip up to the NICU was bittersweet. I would sit with him for as long as I could. It never got any easier to leave him there each time I had to go back to my room. After a week, I was released from the hosptial on 6 medications to maintain my blood pressure, but had to leave without our son. He was not quite ready to leave the NICU as he still had not passed his car seat test. I spent 2 days at home with my husband, preparing for our baby to come home, while struggling to be away from him and still not feeling well. Agony is the only true word I can find to this day to describe what I was feeling during this time. 

A couple days later, 10 days after his birth, he was ready to come home. He had a clean bill of health and was no longer struggling to breath on his own. 

While spent my 3 month maternity leave struggling to keep my blood pressure under control and not feeling well, I savored each moment with my baby. Even the worst of nights with our newborn were treasured. We were so lucky. 

Over the past ten months, I struggled emotionally with our birth experience. I still do. I knew I needed help or support but didn’t know how to articulate what exactly I needed. I felt isolated, lonely in my experience. No one else I knew had experienced this traumatic of a birth story. I still spent much of my days feeling ill, and Googling symptoms, timelines, alternative treatments, doctors, reading Reddit threads, aching to feel like I was not alone in what I had experienced. Eventually I joined various Facebook groups for those that experienced preeclampsia. Finally! SO many women with SUCH similar experiences and stories. For the first time since this journey started I felt validated. I didn’t feel so alone. 

While my struggle still continues but has improved over the past 10 months, I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to have had access to excellent maternal health doctors, cardiologists, and a wonderful support group around me. Many are not as fortunate as we were. 

I walk, this September, to bring awareness to preeclampsia. I walk for the women that are still struggling. I walk for those that experienced great loss during this process. I walk for those that experienced great miracles in their time of struggle. I walk for those, struggling like I have, to manage the trauma of their birth experience. So many like me carry their traumatic birth experience with no real outlet for so long. I walk so those women can feel “brave” enough to finally share their stories and seek the support they need.