What I wish I knew when I was diagnosed with preeclampsia

"I am one of the lucky ones, but here's what I can share after those dark weeks."

They didn’t know what was wrong with my baby. 

There might have been more to it than that - more complex terminology used, more careful wording - but that was what I took away. 

I was 28 weeks pregnant, and my son’s growth had dropped off rapidly. My obstetrician had stopped trying to explain his small size away with well-reasoned platitudes.

“Somebody has to be in the tenth percentile,” she had said only weeks earlier. But apparently, “somebody” did not have to drop from the tenth percentile to the third percentile in just eight days.

Want to join the family? Sign up to our Kidspot newsletter for more stories like this. 

Image: Supplied

RELATED: My husband was the worst part of my traumatic birth

"I had steroid shots to help my baby’s lungs expand so he could breathe"

We were now out of the realm of normal. There would be more tests, more scans. We would see a specialist in baby growth, who would assure me they couldn’t see any problems. He should be absolutely fine; there wasn’t, apparently anything wrong with him. 

Except, of course, that he had dropped off the growth charts.

It was the height of summer. While everyone else was celebrating the warm weather, I was inside, trying desperately to reduce the swelling in my feet by elevating them at every opportunity. Nothing worked.

Nothing worked on the swelling in my hands either, or in my face, which was sometimes so puffy when I woke up in the morning that it blocked my vision. 

Pregnancy in summer, I would joke, was no joke. 

But the joke was on me, in the end. What I read as an uncomfortable exacerbation of normal pregnancy symptoms, what - unbelievably, in retrospect - nobody connected to my baby’s slowing growth, was that I had preeclampsia. 

Preeclampsia is a serious condition of pregnancy, usually characterised by high blood pressure, protein in the urine and severe swelling.

At 29 weeks, I was diagnosed. At 30 weeks, I had steroid shots to help my baby’s lungs expand so he could breathe better when he was, inevitably, born early.

At 31 weeks, I was hospitalised. 

Introducing our new podcast: Mum Club! Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode.

"I was so sick I could barely think"

The day before my son was born, I was so sick I could barely think. I had been transferred from a private hospital to a neighbouring public hospital on the basis that my baby would need the NICU when he came. I was taking pills to keep my blood pressure down every two hours, but it resolutely kept climbing.

The doctor would increase my dose at each two-hourly interval, explaining that they were adjusting my “usual” dose. I didn’t have the energy to tell them there was no “usual” dose, that my dose had been climbing since I was admitted, that I had never had the same dose twice. 

That morning, I had an episode of high blood pressure described as “pre-seizure”. I had learned to recognise the signs of high blood pressure.

It was only an hour since a nurse had last checked it, but I tasted the tell-tale metal tang in my mouth. I asked for another check. The nurse calmly took a reading and walked out of the room. My husband and I looked at each other - did that mean it was okay? 

From the hallway, we heard her make an emergency callout to any available doctors on the ward. Another patient with an emergency, I thought, before six doctors and nurses rushed into my room. 

I was, it transpired, the emergency. 

RELATED: ‘Am I going to hell for vaping while I’m pregnant?’

"Trust your gut"

Once I was out of immediate danger, my obstetrician came in to speak with me. My baby would be born that day. She was organising an operating theatre and would be back soon to get me. 

She was gone for hours. 

When she returned, she had “bad news” for me. I couldn’t give birth at that hospital, because there was no space in the NICU. My baby would have no humidicrib and no ventilator.

He was safest inside me while they found a place for him, but I was at risk every moment until they cut him out. She had considered flying me to Brisbane or Auckland from Sydney, but ultimately had called in a favour to find a place at another Sydney hospital. I was placed on an emergency magnesium drip and taken straight to an ambulance. 

Arriving at the new hospital, I was told my c-section had been pushed to the next morning. That was good news, it was suggested, because I could use the additional time to tour the NICU my son would be admitted to the next day.

I was shivering so hard as I was wheeled around on the tour that I could barely speak. 

At 32 weeks, my son was born. 

Those few days in the lead-up to my first baby’s birth were the most terrifying of my life. I knew hardly anything about preeclampsia except that it was potentially life-threatening to both myself and my baby. 

With time and space to reflect on my experience, I wish I had known to trust my gut instincts more. I knew my “pregnancy” symptoms were unlike anything experienced by other women I knew, but I told myself so many times that everyone experiences pregnancy differently.

Image: Supplied

"Simple things went ignored"

I wish I’d known to insist that my blood pressure be taken and my urine be tested every appointment - simple things that were ignored because I wasn’t, on the face of it, a “high risk” patient.

There’s no guarantee that an earlier diagnosis would have led to a better outcome, but it certainly would have helped mitigate the intense shock that came with an emergency premature birth. 

I am one of the lucky ones, in that my preeclampsia symptoms began to dissipate as soon as my placenta was delivered. That same placenta would later be described as “ragged” in my discharge documents. 

My story, ultimately, has a very happy ending - my baby spent five weeks in the NICU and is now a thriving two-year-old.

When I think about him as a newborn, barely 1.6kg, almost too delicate to hold, I can hardly reconcile him with the robust toddler now tearing around our house. 

I wish I could go back in time and tell myself how he is the light of my life. 

And no matter how traumatic, I’d do it all again, over and over, for my boy.    

Originally published as What I wish I knew when I was diagnosed with preeclampsia