Today’s guest did not anticipate that pregnancy would offer a totally smooth ride to parenthood, but the ride she did encounter included a number of experiences that were nowhere near her radar. Managing a lot of challenging conditions like preeclampsia, and post partum anxiety had significant effects on her: first it encouraged her to reimagine what her family would look like and to find contentment in this family even though it wasn’t what she originally pictured; it made her really engage in caring for herself, to focus on both her mental and physical health; and lastly, this experience made her feel grateful for the life she has now.
Find Jess’s podcast, Only You Podcast
Patent Ductus Arteriosus
Audio Transcript:
Paulette: Hi welcome to War Stories from the Womb. I’m your host Paulette Kamenecka. I’m an economist and a writer and the mother of two girls.
Today’s guest did not anticipate that pregnancy would offer a totally smooth ride to parenthood, but the ride she did encounter included a number of experiences that were nowhere near her radar. Managing a lot of challenging conditions like preeclampsia, and post partum anxiety had significant effects on her: first it encouraged her to reimagine what her family would look like and to find contentment in this family even though it wasn’t what she originally pictured; it made her really engage in caring for herself, to focus on both her mental and physical health; and lastly, this experience made her feel grateful for the life she has now
Let’s get to her inspiring story.
P: HI thanks so much for coming on the show. Can you tell us your name and where you’re from?
Jessica: Absolutely. My name is Jessica Meyer. I’m from the Seattle area. And I host only you a one and done podcast with my husband. Cool. Wow.
P: So I’m gonna get to ask it sounds like you have one child.
J: I sure do.
P: So before you had this child, I imagine you had some idea about what pregnancy would be like. What did you think it would be like?
J: I thought I would be anxious during pregnancy. I definitely was aware of that. I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole life, but I also kind of had this sense of confidence. Like, this is what my body’s supposed to do. I’m going to be able to roll with it. You know, whatever comes my way. I had this intuition. I think somewhere that it was not going to be the easiest pregnancy.
P: Okay, that seems much more attuned to how complicated the process really is.than most of us are on the entrance, but I’m interested to hear so did you get pregnant easily?
J: That part was easy. So I am one of five children. And my mom has always told me that it’s like for our family getting pregnant is usually the easy part. And also for my mom, her deliveries were really fast. So I only tried for a week, and I was pregnant.
P: Oh, wow.
J: Yeah, I got off birth control and I was pregnant one week later.
P: Was that exciting or were you like, Oh, my God, I I’m not ready.
J: I was so mad at my mom because she told me it would take a little while she told me it would take after birth control that it would take about six months. That was her advice. She was like, it’s easy to get pregnant. But if you’ve been on birth control, sometimes it takes your body a little bit of time to like, you know, catch up and so give yourself three to six months after birth control and it should happen pretty easily for you. But it happened immediately for me and so I was like, You lied to me. You told me I had three to six months. And now let’s just here just like that.
P: Yeah, that does sound like pregnancy on demand, which makes for wafer thin adjustment period. So you find out with a home kit is that how you found out?
J: Yep. My husband knew before I did. I was particularly moody and emotional, a different part of our lives. We were also closing a business that we used to own. So I was sort of in the process of cleaning up the retail store and saying goodbye to this really important chapter in my life. So I was really emotional anyway. And I remember one morning before one of the last days or no it was the very last day of my business being open. I was crying. And my husband was making me an apology breakfast for for nothing right. But he didn’t have bacon and so he went to the store to get some bacon and he came home with a pregnancy test. He was like, just in case, you know, he knew that we had been trying and he was like, You seem a little different. And I know it’s the last day of your store. But why don’t we take that too and I was just like, flippant, you know, whatever. I’m so sure. I’ll take it fine. And wouldn’t you know it? It was positive. So
P: wow,
J: we found that out on the last day of this other chapter. It was really beautiful.
P: There’s a story book element that timing. As you’re closing the doors on the store, you’re opening them onto this new adventure. So take us through your pregnancy. How was it the beginning? What did you have morning sickness or anything like that?
J: Yeah, I was a waitress at the time. So I had left that business and I started waitressing because we knew that I was probably going to want to stay at home with the baby so I just wanted the job for the in between times. And I was very sick in the first trimester. I remember potatoes would make me really really nauseous and I worked in a restaurant that had a lot of French fries. And just the smell of that would make me so sick. But it was I didn’t actually like throw up that much. It was more just a general feeling of queasiness all the time.
P: Yeah. And did that go away after the first trimester?
J: it sure did
P: Good. Okay, good. And then and then how was the pregnancy after that?
J: Well, it was at the 20 week scan that we found out that my daughter was small. She was you know, in a low percentile, I think about the 20th percentile at that time. And we also found out a couple other things. I had marginal chord insertion, which meant that the umbilical cord was sort of right at the end of the placenta, and that can cause growth restriction as well. And then we found out that her kidneys were not developing quite right. And that’s an issue that my nephew had struggled with as well and he kind of just grew out of it. So that 20 week scan, for me was very confirming for a lot of the anxieties that I had kind of struggled with. I remember at the very beginning of my pregnancy and pretty much throughout the whole thing I was glued to this website that tells you how likely you are to miscarry that day. It’s a percentage, and it goes down every day as you get further along into your pregnancy and I was terrified of losing this baby at that time. I didn’t know I’d be one and done. But I still don’t know it was my first pregnancy and I already an anxious person. So I just felt fear and so when we had that 20 week scan it was like see you were right all alone to be scared.
P: well that sounds regrettably eventful. That’s a lot going on.
J: It was it. It scared me.
P: Let’s go slow for one second here. You’re sitting down but you don’t look giant like somebody
J: I’m very small.
P: So somebody has to be in the 20th percentile like why not? Your baby?
J: Totally. Yes. I’m, I’m five to and like, you know, 120 pounds or something before pregnancy. So the doctors were like, Yeah, you’re small. My whole family is small. We’re all you know, petite women. My husband is like six five or six something I don’t know. So it could go either way with our daughter. But they weren’t so worried about the small aspect, but it was that plus the marginal court insertion that had them a little bit worried because they needed to be able to keep an eye on the blood flow.
P: Yeah.
J: And to make sure that she was actually getting everything she needed and not to spoil the story, but she wasn’t
P: and the kidneys. Is that a genetic issue since you said your cousin have as well or
J: it may be genetic. It’s also just a common issue for babies just in general and it’s almost always something they grow out of. It’s just one of those things we had to keep an eye on as she it was like, I don’t even remember anymore. Whatever her kidneys were connecting to that connection was too thin. I’m sure there are folks out there who know more about it. But luckily that didn’t end up being one of her long term health issues going forward.
P: Good. And so what do they do after this? Can to kind of keep an eye on you?
J: They just did more ultrasound so I think we did an ultrasound after that every month. And I think that was pretty much it. I was with maternal fetal medicine instead of a midwife at that point. They were just watching us really closely watching my weight watching the baby’s growth and she went from the 20th percentile at 20 weeks to like the 10th or maybe the fifth by 30 weeks. So she was definitely growing very slowly and not in line with her own curve. You know, so if she were at the 20th and stayed at the 20th that wouldn’t have been an issue but they could see her kind of getting smaller and smaller.
P: Well, that sounds stressful. How are you between ultrasounds?
J: I was a wreck. Oh my gosh, trying to eat as much as I could. And I remember feeling really guilty. Because I am such a small frame. I wasn’t. I felt like I was putting a lot. I felt like I was putting on a lot of like water weight. You know, I felt very swollen. But I wasn’t really gaining that much and I just felt like I blamed myself. All the time, because it must be me because I remember when I was sharing with my husband’s mom one time how anxious I was. She said Don’t even worry about it. The baby’s going to be fine on our side of the family. We’ve never had any trouble with newborns. They’ve always been perfect. And those words were just ringing in my head like okay, so you’re saying if anything goes wrong, and it’s 100% me, it’s not your side of the family. I hear that. I’m going to take that in. That’s all I could hear but she was trying to comfort me.
P: also Pregnancy is a weird state have 100% responsibility and no control.
J: totally right. Yeah.
P: So it is hard not to feel responsible for something going on inside you. Yeah, but you really obviously you didn’t put the umbilical cord where was
J: I did not. Not intentionally,
P: that there’s not you know unless you’re not like, you know, smoking or you know, drinking too much alcohol like there are limits to what you can really do.
J: Right.
P: But I’m sympathetic. We’ve been into trouble during my pregnancy that required a lot of extra monitoring. I’ve never been a smoker, the anxiety of the waiting between those scans. definitely piqued my interest in becoming one. This is like a terrible…
J: Yes, completely.
P: It’s very hard not to feel like you’re personally being evaluated in those scans. And it’s hard to separate out, you know, the distinction between what my body is doing and what I’m doing.
J: Sure,
I think honestly, during pregnancy was the beginning of a long journey that I had with hyper vigilance. So during pregnancy, I was extremely by the book, you know, I was checking every single thing before I ate it. I wasn’t taking any medications that weren’t on the list even you’re drinking tea right now and it reminds me I was checking tea. What tea can I have? What do you can take out, you know, things that most pregnant women I think don’t worry too much about. I was hyper focused on the safety of my baby. And that was before I even knew about some of her health issues. So the whole time I was trying to take control of the situation that I had very little control over
P: let me ask you this. Were you were you physically healthy before you got pregnant?
J: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I’ve always been pretty healthy. I mean, even now, I haven’t ever had any health issues, which was why my pregnancy being the way it was, I think came as such a shock.
P: Yeah, that is super hard. You know, once you dig into the details, like the chemistry and all that a pregnancy is a miracle that anyone’s born ever. Like, it’s so so many things have to go right in just the right way. that it’s it’s a tricky thing to nail totally. So anyway, we’re in your story. We’re we’re getting ultrasounds were 30 weeks and what happens then?
J: So I think we were at the 35 week scan, or maybe it was right before the 36 week scan can we go in it’s just a regular growth scan. And the night before I was a wreck. I remember I was crying my eyes out with fear of what was going to happen at that next scan. And again, I think that’s going back to some of this like, anxiety, but also some intuition. Like I was really feeling like something was wrong. And it had been, I think, I think I was at a month between scans. So the last one was 30 and this one was 34. Somewhere around there.
P: Yeah.
J: And I was just feeling so scared. So I was there anything
P: was anything physical going on. Like did you feel pain or no nothing. You just had a sense
J: and she was kicking like my kick counts for good. I just want to correct myself. It was 36 weeks. I had the last one at 32 This one was 36. So when we were getting ready to go the morning for we would do our appointments before my husband had to go to work. So he was in his work uniform. He had his lunch all packed. We had our coffees, but I had my go bag ready pretty early on, just in case. And we drove separately to the doctor’s appointment like we always did. And they took my blood pressure. And it was crazy high. And so they were like that can’t be right. And I remember my eyes were swollen my whole face. was swollen, but I thought it was just because I was crying so much the night before. And so they took it again and it was extremely high. And then they didn’t tell me it was high. They did the scan, and she had dropped below the fifth percentile. So she was like somewhere in the second I think. And I remember the maternal fetal medicine doctor came in and with like, tears in her eyes almost, she was like just so sorry. You need to go to the hospital. You’re not going to be able to leave without your baby. We think you have preeclampsia. You gotta go
and I was just like, what you know this was not an outcome I had prepared myself for preeclampsia.
P: did you know what preeclampsia was?
J: I did from my you know, feverish research throughout the pregnancy of all things birth you know, I listened to a lot of birth podcasts. And I read a lot of birth books. And so to me preeclampsia was almost like a death sentence. I was really scared because I had heard a lot of really terrible outcomes. So she seemed scared. And that made me feel scared.
P: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
J: And she basically said for the safety of you and your baby, that you got to go. And so I remember they put you in a wheelchair, wheeled me over the hospital. It was just like, This is crazy. Pierce called out of work. It’s like I think I’m gonna be on paternity leave now I got a you know, so I was already you know, I had already taken leave, I think for my job that so they wheeled me over, took my blood pressure again. I think at that point, like normal is 120 over 80 And I believe it was to 220 over 120
P: Oh my god. It was Yeah. Oh my I think the cutoff for preeclampsia is 140 over 90.
J: Yeah, it was very it was like scary high and so they put me on, I don’t know some kind of medication right away They put me on a high dose of low beta low almost right away and that actually I continue to take for a long time. And I remember one of the first things they did when I got into my emergency triage room was they gave me a shot in my back for pennies. Like a steroid shot for her lung development.
P: Yeah,
J: is there like this is happening now. We need to get this baby ready so that she can survive. It’s just, I mean, those kinds of words being thrown around pregnant mother where she had probably stopped growing somewhere between those two scans. So not only was I having a 36 weaker, but it was a 36 weaker who was probably the size of like 32 weaker.
P: So but she was still kicking for that. Those weeks right between 32 and 36.
J: Kicking. Yeah, yes. Okay. Yeah, she was still moving really great. So when I would do my kick counts and stuff that was all good. She seemed, you know, she seemed pretty strong to me. Yeah. And, you know, she, they were checking her so they put a monitor on my belly pretty quickly as well. And that was kind of the beginning. of my birth story, right then, you know, kind of suddenly on a random Monday morning at 36 weeks.
P: And so are they saying it’s gonna be a C section or are they saying you can try to like did you have had you have imagined what the birth would look like?
J: Yeah, I had a doula who unfortunately was out of town because we were away before my due date. And they told me that they were going to try to induce because they, they wanted to avoid a C section. I don’t remember why. Something about losing Blood, I want to say they wanted to do it naturally, at all costs. That was the birth plan. So they were going to bring me in and have me stay in a room and induce me. And because I didn’t have my my midwife or like my actual doctor there. They were changing care plans a lot. So it was like, Alright, we’re gonna get you in a room now. And start inducing you or we’re gonna send you home and have you come back Friday and induce you no if you go home. You probably won’t be okay. And so they were kind of changing up my care plan a lot because the way Badal did lower my blood pressure.
P: Oh, good.
J: So that that worked pretty quickly on me. It was a very high dose but it didn’t have too bad of side effects or anything. And it was just funny because I felt fine. Like I felt swollen but yeah, I blood pressure. It doesn’t really feel like anything for me. At least I didn’t have the tunnel vision that they talked about or the headache.
P: Yeah,
J: I wasn’t really getting any of those. So it was just kind of a real surprise for me that I was even sick. And I remember them saying, honey, you’re really really sick. And just being like, how I feel fine.
P: That is kind of a weird disconnect. Right?
J: Yeah.
P: So how did the How did the induction you know?
J: That’s okay. So they ended up giving me a room and I spent about five days being induced. So I was there a long time.
P: Oh my God.
J: They had such a hard time stabilizing my blood pressure, like the labetalol would work one day the next day, it would not be working anymore. So they try a different dosage and they tried it intravenously. And then Penny is like her heart rate would go down with too much medication. So that was on Monday. I think the Pitocin didn’t even start until Wednesday, because they were still just like trying to get me stabilized. And the Pitocin and the magnesium I think happened on the same day.
P: So are you in the hospital feeling anxious? Do you feel like I am where I need to be and we’ll sort this out.
J: It was kind of a blur at a certain point. Like the first couple days I was really glad to be there and I was really against them. sending me home. Like I do not want to do this at home like my anxiety is going to be out of control if you just have me sit there and monitor my blood pressure. Because you know, all throughout the night and day I had this monitor on my belly for a penny and then I had a cuff and I think every hour the cuff would go off. And then I could hear Penny’s monitor every moment. And so I was just like in full on hyper vigilance mode.
P: Yeah.
J: And like my mom was there my husband and like, luckily, this was pre COVID. So I could have, you know, a couple people there with me, but I just I wanted to stay in the hospital at all costs. And they weren’t going to send me home anyway. I don’t think so. The first couple days. I was definitely feeling like part of the care team. You know, I was really trying to make sure whatever medication I was on wasn’t affecting her and trying to manage my dosages and stuff. And then once they put me on the magnesium on Wednesday, I was kind of I was kind of useless to the world. There were a lot of side effects for the magnesium. I was very shaky.
P: Yeah,
J: like almost tremors they put me on. They put me on some drug at some point that they told me it would be like a glass of wine. And it was not like a glass of wine. It was like a bottle of wine for me. My husband always teases me and says that I asked the doctor I kept calling him man. I was like hey man. How are you? Like what? He said, I just seemed like I was my old self. But like way before being a mom like I was at a party.
P: I feel like that’s the way to do it. That sounds right.
J: I wasn’t worried about anything for that amount of time but I was still very shaky and so the cervadil and the Pitocin. I think those both started really working on Thursday. And then I was about four centimeters dilated on Thursday. And there was a point where they felt like, although the induction medications were working, they were actually putting too much strain on Penny. So every time I would have a contraction, her heart rate would go down. So they started talking about a C section at that point. They were like this induction is actually going to be too much on her. If we keep trying to go this route. She might not make it. You might not make it. So we were talking about a C section and I was really pushing for that. I was like I do not care about natural birth versus a C section. Whatever is safest like, please just take me down there. I want to be done like I want to be safe. But they were really adamant on doing it naturally. So we kept laboring, things kept moving. And then finally very early Friday morning she was born.
P: Wow. So have you slept at all of these five days. I feel like….
J: no
P: I feel like the blood pressure cuff alone would wake you up every hour.
J: Certainly not more than an hour at a time. No. Wow. I I was in a fog. I hardly remember. My husband was kind of updating our family in a group chat. I remember watching movies. We watched Shrek at one point I think it was sort of like a dream state.
P: Can you can you push when you have magnesium?
J: I did. I guess
P: Wow.
J: can I say something kind of gross.
P: Yeah.
J: Is that okay on a podcast like? So I’m very stubborn. And I remember when they finally took me into the birth room, so I had been laboring in a labor room and then they are going to take me into the birth room where they had a NICU team at the ready. And they had like a warming table. It was a huge room. I think this was the room they take women who are having a high risk labor so there’s like 10 people in there. Yeah. And it felt like a spaceship. I was so out of my mind. And for some reason on TV, there was a space show. So I felt like I was giving birth like on a spaceship. And they were like okay, they gave me the epidural.
P: Yeah,
J: there was nothing. That was fine. I was like that was fine compared to all the other things you guys have been doing to me. And they were going to do a catheter because after you have the epidural, you know, you kind of need to do a catheter. And I was like, I’m not doing that. I’m not gonna get a catheter because I didn’t want them to have to take it out later. After all the drugs had worn off
P: where’s fun bottle wine girl.
J; Those drugs had worn off. She would have been fine with it. This was like hungover so fun bottle of wine girl was no more and now it was hungover shaky magnesium girl. Yeah, and she was refusing a catheter. So they were like, I don’t think this is your choice. You have to go pee right now like we can tell your bladder is full and you don’t have any control. of your body. And I was like yes, I do. If you put a bedpan under me I’m gonna go pee right now. They’’re like that’s not possible. And I was like yes if this so they put it under me and I did. I totally went pee right there. And I don’t know if the epidural totally like took because I felt a lot of labor in my back. So I guess maybe it like, halfway worked because I had total control of my bladder as well.
P: Yeah.
J: Which was I mean, it wasn’t super painful. It worked where it needed to work. Yeah, but I just I remember that because it was a good example of me just being so stubborn and of all the things like catheters don’t hurt that bad when you take them out. It’s not fun. But I was about to give birth and I wouldn’t let them just so stupid.
P: gotta’ plant the flag somewhere
J: that’s where I draw the line. So the actual birth it was hard. I pushed for probably an hour and a half. Because I was so exhausted, like my body was tired and magnesium made me very out of it and I hadn’t slept. So I was just having a really hard time mustering up the strength to push so it took quite a bit of time for me to deliver her. And she was born at 1:44am on the Friday.
P: Wow. Oh my god, what a long labor.
J: Really long
P: Yeah. And what was her state when she was born?
J: So she was about four pounds. 11 ounces.
P: Well done.
J: Thank you. Not so bad. Yeah. She passed the Apgar tests greatly. So that was all good. She was cold. So she didn’t need to be in the warming table. They let her do skin to skin with me. She lashed right away. And then she did skin to skin with her dad under the warming thing or I mean like, I remember I had him wear a button up so he could do skin to skin with her, but it was like a wool button. So he was just sweating. It was way too hot. But they kind of stitched me up I had a couple of tears and yeah, she was tiny. But she was mighty.
P: That’s awesome. And did she stay in the NICU for long?
J: So they didn’t put her in the NICU. She was just rooming with us she had like mid level jaundice. So they were just having us nurse her a lot. And unfortunately, I think our care team maybe dropped the ball. I think she probably should have gotten in the NICU. And I think she should have been observed more closely. Because they sent us home the next day that I think maybe it was the Sunday. Yeah. So we spent Saturday there and I think they sent us home on Sunday morning.
P: Wait, this this is too fast for me to send you home.
J: I agree.
P: wait, your blood pressure is fine. Now
J: my blood pressure had stabilized but I was on the beta low. Okay. So I remember they were discharging us and she was doing the carseat test, which is what they do for infants under five pounds to make sure that they can like sit in a car seat. Yeah, when she passed him. And I remember being like to the doctor, hey, do you want to test my blood pressure again before I go? And he was like, No, you’re probably fine. Like they had completely stopped taking care of me. And they were just focused on her. And she seemed to be doing fine and they tested her jaundice just the one time and it was medium. So they’re like just put her in the light and feed her. Like okay, so we got home on the Sunday and she was getting yellower or and yellower and I hadn’t been able to get an appointment to get her seen for her first ever doctor’s appointment. until Tuesday. So Monday came around and it’s like she wasn’t eating very well. And they hadn’t given me any information on like supplementing with formula. I remember calling and being like, can I give her formula because I don’t know if she’s getting anything like I don’t have that much milk coming out right now. I think it’s just colostrum. They’re like hers. Her belly is the size of a nut. You know, she doesn’t need very much. I was like But she has jaundice. So we ended up getting an earlier appointment with a pediatrician. And she opened up her diaper or I did and there were crystals in the diaper because she was so dehydrated.
P: Yikes.
J: And she was like so she’s really dehydrated and she’s really yellow. So we’re going to need her jaundice. You know, we’re gonna have to check her jaundice. So what we’re going to do is I’m going to get you a room in the children’s hospital, so you can just go ahead and go straight there and you’ll get right into a room
we were like what? We have to go back to the hospital. And as it turned out her jaundice levels were like, off the charts. And she had to be she my little one day or two day old baby had to get an IV of fluids because she was so dehydrated. And that that was really hard, you know, high jaundice levels and dehydration that can that can kill an infant, you know, and I just feel like my care team really dropped the ball with us. So we ended up actually being at the children’s hospital for a few weeks, because while we were there, they found some other issues and she had a heart murmur. And it turned out she had a PDA.
P: Okay, according to the Mayo Clinic, a PDA is a heart condition. It stands for patent ductus arteriosus and it involves an opening between two major blood vessels that lead from the heart. This opening is supposed to exist in the fetus, and at birth is supposed to close for a baby that’s born at term. Whether it becomes a significant issue or not depends on how big it is. If it’s big, it can allow poorly oxygenated blood to travel in the wrong direction. And can weaken the heart muscle and cause all kinds of complications.
J: for babies that are preemies that haven’t developed all the way it doesn’t close completely. And it’s supposed to just close over time but because she stopped cooking, it never did. So you can just hear this big murmur this big opening in her heart. And so we had to, they had to decide if they want to try to close it with a surgery or if they’re going to do a couple other things. They decided to just let it close over time. And as of today, she’s 19 months old, it still is not closed completely. It went from really big to really really microscopically small. So we’re gonna check back when she’s two to see if it closes. But she was having some issues. Like with her breathing, she was having some issues with her heart and then her jaundice was you know she had all of these different problems that probably should have been caught and taken care of in the hospital. And she should have been in the NICU getting 24 hour care, but they just kind of sent us home.
P: Yeah, that seems like a weird decision. Also, I guess when you told me it was going to close on its own and I wasn’t thinking of a two year timeline. Is that what you were imagining?
J: Most of them don’t take that long. So usually when they say it’s going to close on their own, it’s like before the three month appointment or so.
P: Yeah, yeah.
J: But sometimes it does take longer, just depends on the kiddo and how big it was to begin with. There’s other ways that they can do it like when it’s really big and not getting smaller for really tiny infants. I think of them like Tylenol, or ibuprofen or something like there’s there’s non invasive ways for them to fix it. But if she does end up needing a surgery, it’s pretty not easy, but it’s not even open heart. It’s just like a catheter that goes under her chest and into her heart and it just kind of like this little tiny filler where that hole is so it’s kind of you know, almost 100% success rate, but they’re not, they’re not really important. Yeah, no, no, it’s not something that’s going to follow her throughout her life. Like a lot of people who have that condition never even know about it until they’re in their 50s or 60s and they have their first heart attack. And their doctor is like, oh, when you were a baby. This part never grew in. And it’s a lot harder to do this surgery or this procedure when you’re an adult than it is when you’re a baby which is why they find it. They’d like to nip it in the bud.
P: Now talk to me about you How are you feeling in the fourth trimester and what’s going on with preeclampsia? And does that all work out?
J: wouldn’t you know it, I was still super sick. I remember when I was in the children’s hospital I felt pretty bad. And I don’t think I was taking any medication anymore. I think they just let it all come out of my system because traditionally they say the number one way to cure preeclampsia is to have a baby. I did that. And sort of I think just assumed it would solve itself. So my mom had encouraged me to get one of those at home blood pressure. cuffs at one point but we were in children’s hospital so I wasn’t going to leave her for even one second. I was having some really bad postpartum anxiety and depression and seeing her in the lights, the biliruben lights that was very traumatizing for me. So I couldn’t leave her I just couldn’t step away even for a second. And so I think it wasn’t until like a week later that I finally got out and got my blood pressure checked and it was super, super high.
So I called my midwife or my doctor and they’re like, Yeah, you have to go to the emergency room. I had to leave my infant, go to the emergency room with my mom. And they were trying to decide if they were going to admit me, put me back on a magnesium drip because they were like you have postpartum preeclampsia.
P: Yeah,
J: you’re still a risk for a stroke or a seizure. We can’t like just let you walk around like this.
P: Yeah,
J: but I didn’t even notice and I think even if I was having symptoms, I wouldn’t have done anything because I just wanted to be with her. Like my my mom’s sense was too strong. I couldn’t take care of myself. But it was actually my mom. You know, convinced me so I have my baby but I’m still her baby. You know. So that was kind of a special moment for me that my mom was so involved in making sure that I was getting taken care of as well. So they ended up not admitting me I remember I was crying asking them begging them. Please don’t make me stay here. I need to get back to my baby. She’s in the hospital. And they just put me on more labetalol and I think one other medication and had me monitor it again every day on my own and it actually took three months for it to stabilize.
P: Yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes, right?
J: Yeah.
P: And how’s everyone now?
J: Oh, good. I’m good. I mean, I checked it for a long time, I think up to the six month mark. And then now whenever I go to the doctor and it’s been completely normal since Penny is growing amazingly well. She like skyrocketed in growth because I ended up pumping for the most part at the Children’s Hospital. They had me kind of 24/7 hooked up to have planned and so they could measure her feeds because they we had this big chart up on the wall and we would write down exactly how many milliliters she would take. You know it was like that my and then we would supplement with formula or donated breast milk as needed. So for the first few months of her life, I was nursing concurrently with pumping and doing measured feeds. And so between the first and third month she like bumped right back up to a decent percentile. You know she’s still not huge, but she was back up to like that 20th percentile range good of like, not even one.
P: Yeah,
J: but between birth and that first doctor’s appointment. She went from four pounds 11 ounces to just four pounds even. So she lost 11 ounces just the first day of being alive. She was really having failure to thrive, basically And the pediatrician who sort of sent us to the Children’s Hospital the first time is still our pediatrician now and every time she sees Penny, she’s like, I cannot believe this is the same baby as that stick of butter you brought it as she was the size and the color of a stick of butter.
P: That seems like a triumph. Right? That’s that’s a great endorsement of all parenting. Yes, I’m working on another episode of the show that includes the story of a woman who experienced preeclampsia in ways that are different from yours. And I’m putting together that story. I talked to a maternal fetal medicine doctor who specializes in preeclampsia research. And she said we need to get away from using the word cure because there’s no quote unquote cure. Preeclampsia has this extended reach and that even after delivery, both the mother and the baby from the preeclamptic pregnancy are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease going forward. In her lab at University of Chicago they’re working on biomarkers to help identify preeclampsia much earlier. Oh, she said preeclampsia comes with all these kind of vague symptoms like swelling, or you might have a headache really have a little hypertension, but there’s no protein in the urine and so it doesn’t get caught. And so her lab has figured out the ratio of these two chemicals that a preeclamptic pregnancy produces if you look at the ratio and so they can predict, you know, a month beforehand, kind of which path that you will go on because some people have hypertension and it doesn’t develop into anything.
J: Sure.
P: So talk to us a little bit then about your ongoing care of yourself or like what you’re doing
J: so I think preeclampsia basically what led to us being one and done. First and foremost. Yeah. It took me about a week from having, you know, been past that experience to say I’m not doing that again. Yeah, and talking to doctors because we’re in the hospital setting and saying Is this likely to happen again? And I’m saying well, yeah, if you’ve had it once, it’s not unlikely that you’ll have it again. It’s not 100% Guaranteed right? And then talking to my primary care doctor after having postpartum preeclampsia. They told me that because I’m like, so predisposed to hypertension, and then it kind of stuck around for so long that he would think it actually is more likely for me to have it a second time. I’m 29. Now so if I were to get pregnant again, I would be a little bit older. And for me, from what I can tell from my care team, it feels like a 5050 split, whether it would happen again in my second pregnancy. So that was my first decision. We were gonna have several kids and we decided to cut it short at one.
And aside from that, I’m just a lot more involved in my care, you know, I go to my doctor’s appointment, I do yearly physicals, I try to stay active, all these kinds of things. I actually just found out that I have like permanent damage to my eyes. My optic nerve was damaged somewhere in my pregnancy. It’s possible that it was that time of very, very high blood pressure that did damage my optic nerve, but it puts me more at risk for Glaucoma. So that’s like another thing.
P: Can you do you feel any symptom of that now or no?
J: Well, I just got new glasses, but I went to the doctor just to get a routine eye exam because my vision had changed a lot pre pregnancy to now about 19 months later. And that’s normal, right? When you have a baby your vision changes, but it had gotten substantially worse. And I had this new optic nerve issue. So that’s something I have to do yearly eye exams and eventually I might have to do some glaucoma risk care. So there’s like these eyedrops that you can take to make sure there’s not too much pressure on your eyes. It’s actually very treatable if you catch it early, which luckily I seem to have done.
P: So Pregnancy is a stress test, obviously on everyone’s bodies, and that’s one thing it is hard to, I think, carry the burden of a potentially chronic condition. At the same time. It feels like you’re getting in at a time where maybe you can affect that trajectory.
J: Yeah,
P: so. That’s kind of you know, if there’s any good news to be had in this
J: I feel like you know, my husband and I met and we pretty quickly got married, like within a year and a half of our first date. We are married and how to house like we moved very quickly. And we had already known each other a long time so his sister is my best friend.
P: oh lovely
J: So we knew each other but like our first date, I should say not really when we met anyway. It just all moved so fast. And sometimes I wonder like wonder what made me want to move so quickly. And I wonder if somewhere deep inside like I wanted to do my pregnancy as early as possible before I was any older, because maybe my intuition was telling me like this isn’t going to be super easy on your body. And I don’t know. I just wonder if the universe helped me out with that or something. Because
P: Yeah, no kidding.
J: I kind of got out lucky all things considered. And so Penny,
P: totally, totally. I’m curious here. We’ll say this. If you could give advice to your younger self, what do you think you’d tell her?
J: I don’t think I would change anything. I wouldn’t have wanted to have a baby any earlier. That’s for sure. Yeah, just like emotionally and maturity wise. Yeah. Right. So I think I would be pretty proud of my younger self for everything that she did to get me here and get me to a place where I can be a good mom and and survive this really difficult pregnancy.
P: It is amazing, right? I’m sure you look at Penny as she grows every day and think I can’t believe it.
J: Yeah, I absolutely do. She’s my lucky penny. That’s what I call her.
P: That’s awesome. So how old is she now? She’s she’s not too yet.
J: No, she’s 19 months old.
P: So we’re her tricks. What does she like to do?
Unknown Speaker 13:40
Oh, she’s got a big personality. She’s really funny. She likes to make people laugh a lot. So she’s like our little comedian. If she does something that makes you laugh once she will like do it a lot to try to keep getting a rise out of you
P: super cute.
J: She likes to copy what you’re doing so like today, or yesterday we were doing like a Baba Baba bad and then she would do it back to us. Yeah, like she’s very musical. And I don’t know, I think she’s going to be somewhere in the entertainment world because she just like she likes to be the star of the show. And being an only child is only going to add
P: I was gonna say to the stage already. Yes. Nice to know, totally carved her path is awesome, Jessica. Thanks. So much for coming on the show and sharing your story. It’s an important one to share and one that I think is totally hopeful.
J: Oh, good. Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me and if there are any parents out there who are struggling with the decision to relive anything that they went through with their birth experience, I would just like to say to them, you know, your mental health is really important. And your physical health is really important. And if that means your family has to look different than you thought it would, that’s okay. And you can give yourself a little bit of grace for that.
P: Yeah, that’s a great ending message. Thank You
J; Absolutely
