I went in to be induced the day before my due date. My pregnancy had been smooth, my blood pressure perfect at every appointment, and I was so excited to finally meet my son.

Still, preeclampsia had always lingered in the back of my mind. A nursing friend once told me about something her OB instructor had said, that the highest blood pressure she had ever seen in pregnancy was 180/120, and neither the mother nor the baby survived. That story stayed with me.

So when I arrived for my induction and my blood pressure measured 239/126, I was stunned. Terrified. It didn’t feel real.

The strangest part was that I felt completely normal. No headache. No vision changes. No upper abdominal pain. No warning signs at all.

My medical team sprang into action, working quickly to bring my blood pressure down. The night that followed was long and frightening, blood pressure checks every fifteen minutes, medications, alarms, and the constant fear of what might happen next. At one point my pressure dropped so quickly that I nearly passed out.

By morning, I was given blood pressure medication and an epidural. But the combination didn’t go as planned. My son’s heart rate suddenly dropped, and within moments everything shifted. I was rushed into an emergency C-section.

My son suffered hypoxia and damage to his right lung. He spent two weeks in the NICU recovering from meconium aspiration and lack of oxygen.

I stayed in the hospital for a week after he was born. On the fourth and fifth nights, my blood pressure spiked again in the middle of the night, reaching 190/100. Even after going home, I remained on blood pressure medication for about a month.

To this day, having my blood pressure taken can still trigger panic attacks. The experience left its mark in the form of PTSD and OCD because I now have a hard time believing my body will tell me when something is wrong.
But above everything else, what stays with me most is gratitude. The outcome could have been so different. My son and I both made it out alive, and that is something I will never take for granted.