Preeclampsia Postpartum: The Plot Twist I Didn't See Coming

There I was, 10 centimeters dilated, one leg in my husband’s hands, the other in my nurse’s, gripping the hospital bed rails for dear life. I was locked in on my OB-GYN, who was calmly coaching me through each contraction. “You have to get above the baby with your body,” she said, like I was doing Olympic gymnastics and not, you know, pushing out a human. “Push down and out; he’s gotta get past your pelvis bone.” With everything swirling in my head, I closed my eyes, letting each wave of contractions hit me like an oncoming tide, then sprinting through each push.

Somewhere in the middle of this beautiful madness, my doctor threw out something about me having hypertension. Now, “hypertension” isn’t exactly the word you want to hear while pushing a baby out. It's when your blood pressure is consistently high—and I guess mine decided that this moment was the perfect time to act up. But hey, in that sweet, blurry hour and a half of pushing, everything sounded muffled, like I was underwater. I knew they were talking, but honestly, I was too deep in the zone to care much about what was happening outside my body. Spoiler alert: I should’ve cared more.

After a little over an hour and a half, our little guy finally made his entrance. Everyone was happy, healthy, and basking in the glow of new baby joy. We got whisked off to the recovery room, where I was promptly hooked up to monitors like I was in some kind of sci-fi movie. Nurses came in every hour, dutifully recording my stats like they were prepping for a final exam. My blood pressure was still high, but not high enough to sound the alarms.

Cue the “new mom” moment: I’m there in my adult diaper (because postpartum glamour is real), breasts sore from both the hormonal rollercoaster and trying to nurse, emotionally fragile from a postpartum hormonal dump, and completely exhausted. I was wheeled out of the hospital with a proud yet sleep-deprived smile, while my husband struggled to figure out how to install the car seat. We gingerly drove home, going slower than a parade float on the bumpy FDR, across the bridge to Brooklyn. At that point, all I wanted was to crawl into bed with my baby and pretend the world wasn’t still spinning.

But alas, the plot thickens. I was sent home with a blood pressure monitor and strict instructions to check my stats morning and night. On day three, after a string of elevated readings, I reluctantly called my OB-GYN, expecting a little “it’s fine, just relax” pep talk. Instead, I got a “Get back to the hospital, like, yesterday” response. Apparently, I was teetering on the edge of stroke territory. Now, I didn’t feel like I was going to stroke out, but I also hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time in a week, so who really knows how I felt? So, we packed up the baby, grabbed some snacks (priorities), and headed back to the hospital.

Once we got there, I naively thought this would be a quick six-hour check-up, followed by a swift return home. Nope. Wrong again. Turns out, I had preeclampsia. Yes, folks, you can get preeclampsia after giving birth. It’s like a surprise gift that no one asked for. Postpartum preeclampsia is rare, affecting about 4-6% of women, but it can still happen—even if you had normal blood pressure before and during delivery. Lucky me!

So, what’s the cure for this delightful condition? Magnesium sulfate therapy, which sounds fancy but feels like your body is about to combust from the inside out. This miracle drug is supposed to prevent seizures in women with preeclampsia, but it also comes with a super fun side effect of heating you up like a furnace. They plugged me into the magnesium drip, and boom—I went from shivering in my hospital gown to feeling like I was in the middle of the Sahara Desert. They brought in a fan to try to cool me down, but I was basically sweating through my bedsheets.

Then came the brain fog. Imagine being in a perpetual state of loopiness, where everything feels silly and surreal. After about 12 hours of this, I woke up to find that my vision had gone haywire. I was seeing quadruple and feeling like someone had stuffed cotton behind my eyeballs. This led to throbbing headaches that felt like the universe’s way of saying, “Not done with you yet!” But after 24 hours, the worst of it passed. The magnesium drip was finally done, and slowly, things started to return to normal-ish.

I ended up spending three days in the hospital, under the careful watch of my medical team, until I was finally cleared to go home again. This time, with a prescription for blood pressure meds to help level things out. “What a way to kick off motherhood,” I thought, as I juggled dodging a stroke, trying to get my baby to latch properly, and shredding my nipple as I attempted to figure out how the hell to use a breast pump.

Oh, and just to add to the drama, during my own health crisis, my sweet little guy also had to take a trip to the emergency room. Don’t worry, that story’s for another day, but let’s just say, our first week as a family wasn’t exactly picture-perfect. Instead of snuggling up at home like we’d imagined, we spent our time between hospital rooms, me hooked up to machines, and our baby boy getting his first taste of NYC’s emergency services. My husband, the hero in all this, was busy suppressing chest pains of his own, because why not throw a little extra chaos into the mix?

We didn’t get that peaceful, Instagram-worthy first week as a family, but we did get something arguably better—survival and a sense of humor. If nothing else, we learned to laugh through the madness. And let me tell you, if you can laugh while dodging postpartum strokes and ER visits, you can laugh through just about anything.

So here’s to taking it one day at a time, embracing the unknown, and knowing that no matter what curveballs life throws your way, you’ve got the strength to get through it. And if you’re lucky, you’ll come out stronger, with a few good stories to tell.

Stay fresh, have a laugh, and join the club!

—Fresh Diapie Social Club