Story of preeclampsia, hellp syndrome and my two beautiful children, one in heaven with angels.

Posted On Monday, January 03, 2011  by Kaylee

I'm 24 years old and in both of my pregnancies had severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. My firstborn was born at 26 weeks gestation, 1lb 9oz 13" long. This was severe preeclampsia. During my ultrasounds at my check up, they noticed she was a little smaller than normal size for the gestation week I was at. It started around 23 weeks- I was swelling up everywhere, I would wake up and barely open my eyes, wasn't able to stand long because my feet were so swollen, as well as my wrists and I had horrible headaches that wouldnt go away. At 26 weeks it was severe.  I was told to come into the hospital where I was admitted on hospital bedrest for 5 days. They thought they were going to deliver her that day of me coming in, so they gave me steroids to help my daughter's lungs get ready faster. Fortunately my blood pressure, which was so high, was controllable. After all those days on magnesium, the worst!, I was sent home and the next day I had more headaches and stomach pains that were incontrollable. With ultrasounds at the hospital, they told me that there wasn't the right amount of amniotic fluid and that was way she was not measuring where she should. I arrived again two days after being released and they were not able to control my blood pressure, and told me I was going to have my baby girl. I was so scared because I didn't know if she was going to live, they were preparing me with all odds. She is now 2 and is healthy as can be, but she is still the size of a 18 month old! She stayed 1 month in the NICU and then transferred to a children's hospital 2 hours away for the next 3 months. She had NEC, many blood transfusions and infections.

My second was born a year after my daughter. I had severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. My son was also born at 26 weeks, 1lb 5oz 11" long. He was growth-restricted because also there was not enough amniotic fluid to get nutrition to him. My platelet level was so low I almost ended up in the ICU. It started with severe pain in my stomach, no swelling or mild headaches. It would not go away and from past experience I went straight to the hospital. It's weird because the pain wasn't there until my 26th week of pregnancy. The doctors told me I was not going anywhere because they were not able to control my blood pressure and gave me steriods immediately. There was a 12 hr minimum of the steriods working and that's all they gave me. I had him the next morning. He was a lot more concern because he was growth-restricted. He had a blood clot in his head that was finally getting smaller just before he past away, he also had staph infection twice and developed NEC but it was worse than my daughter's. He needed surgery, which happened at 2 months old. My son passed away from complicatioins from surgery, till this day I don't understand how the doctors were able to do my son the way they did. I don't understand what's wrong with me and why I can not carry past 26 weeks, the doc told me I will always have this problem. I found out after my daughter I have MTHFR Mutation, but he said it had nothing to do with my pregnancy complication because I only had one gene. I'm hoping I can get some answers on this website and hopefully find others who can relate to me. It's very hard losing my son, he is now 16 months old and I'm sure he would have been walking by now. What is so hard is that I have been trying to get pregnant for over 7 months now and it just is not happening. I had to have every test done to see what exactly is wrong with me. I don't know if going through so much with my body and pregnancies that it caused me not to be able to get pregnant again. Thank you for listening.