I was 28 and having my first pregnancy, I was naive and excited about bringing my son into the world. Everything seemed normal, until the end. I started getting headaches, seeing spots and feeling anxious. I thought it was because my husband was out of town, and I was nearly 36 weeks.

I had a routine doctor’s appointment and when the nurse took my blood pressure she quickly ran to get the doctor to verify that it was indeed 250/100. I was admitted to the hospital immediately and they started an induction and my blood pressure was being monitored every 5-6 minutes. I felt like I was in a movie scene and this wasn’t really happening to me. I called my husband and told him he had to get back in town. This was on a Thursday.

The nurses continued to monitor my condition, but I was not progressing, and I started to feel very nauseous and have upper right shoulder pain that I thought was indigestion. Looking back now, I think they were trying to hold off on a c-section due to the fact that my blood pressure wasn’t coming down with the magnesium and I could hemorrhage in surgery. It seemed to go on forever and I continued to get sicker, throwing up and weaker.

Sunday morning they did an emergency c-section and my son was born weighing 3lbs 13 ounces. It wasn’t until after delivery that the doctor realized how sick I was. They ran blood tests and it was confirmed I had preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. Everything gets fuzzy at this point, and I just remember being so swollen they couldn’t find my vein to start blood transfusions. I remember the nurse standing over me, telling me I have to hang on because I needed to meet my son in the NICU, but everything was quiet and I felt like I was slipping away.

Days went by, and my body slowly started to recover. I was so swollen I couldn’t even feed myself because my hands couldn’t grip anything. I believe it was on day 4 that I finally got to meet my son for the first time. I was so scared - seeing all the wires was very intimidating, but he seemed to be doing ok despite his size. On day 6, I got to go home, but I never experienced heartache like I did that day leaving my son behind. He had to stay for 4 weeks and I’ve never been so happy the day I brought him home. Processing what I went through took time, I felt robbed of the normal happy experience, but I was so grateful to be alive and have my son that I quickly realized just how precious life is.