My entire life I’ve had blood pressure on the low side; 90’s-100’s over 60’s-70’s has always been my normal, even while pregnant, and I have zero risk factors for preeclampsia, which is why I was shocked when it happened to me, and was hard to process. The morning after giving birth to my 3rd baby, the nurse came in to take my vitals and I told her that after breakfast, I had started to feel really strange and extremely out of breath but that I had chalked it up to having my first full strength cup of coffee in months. She took my blood pressure and it was in the 150’s systolic, which shocked me, but again I figured it was the coffee. After ten minutes or so, she rechecked it and it had gone down to 130’s systolic so it wasn’t followed up on. For the next few days at home, I continued to feel very out of breath at times, as well as an on-again, off-again headache, but every time I took my BP, it would either be under 140/90, or go right back down after awhile, so I just assumed it was sleep deprivation and ignored it, even though deep down, I did feel like something was wrong. But I’m a nurse, and sometimes we make the worst patients!

On postpartum day 7, I was sitting at my kitchen table when all of a sudden, my vision went blurry, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, had a horrible feeling of impending doom and then started seeing black spots. My husband was at work while I was home with my 3 children under 5, and suddenly I was extremely scared about what was happening, and our safety. My midwife told me to immediately come in, but I decided to wait for my husband to leave work and take me. By the time we got to triage an hour or two later, I had lost peripheral vision in one eye, my BP was almost 200/110, and my liver enzymes were elevated. Having had no risk factors, I was so shocked about being diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia with severe features, and kept asking how this had happened to me. Thankfully, I was permitted to keep my baby with me during treatment the next couple days, but it was tough taking care of her while being on the magnesium.

I’m 3mos postpartum now and currently wearing a holter monitor, still on multiple BP medications, and seeing a maternal cardiologist. It’s been difficult to process the fact that I’ve gone through this, and how close to death I might have been. Looking back, there was an instance in my late 2nd trimester where I developed a severe headache that didn’t go away for days- when I went to triage for it, my BP was in the 130’s/80’s so they sent me home. But that range is significantly higher than my normal 90’s/60’s. A couple weeks after that, I started experiencing intense shortness of breath that would wake me up at night, but again, my BP’s were always under 140/90. I do wonder if my preeclampsia had started while I was still pregnant, but since my pressure never reached that number, it wasn’t caught. I’m so grateful that my baby is ok and that I will be too- I wish I wouldn’t have gaslit myself about my symptoms for so long, and hope to prevent others from doing the same!