r/preeclampsia

I had postpartum preeclampsia 4 days after my daughter was born - BP 200/110, 24 hour magnesium drip, prescribed procardia for 3 weeks to lower BP and got off it once I was well managed.

I am now 7 months postpartum and have been having some trouble breathing when I lay down for bed at night and some chest tightness. VERY minor, no pain,, feels more like I'm wearing a low impact sports bra to bed, but I'm overly anxious and very aware of cardiac activity now. I looked into this issue while scheduling an appointment with the doctor and I'm reading that preeclampsia doubles your risk of heart attack and stroke and quadruples your risk of heart failure.

Now I'm panicking, I do NOT like these odds. Im reading all these online forums where so many ~50 year old women (or even younger) who have had preeclampsia have all had at least one heart attack. Why did no one tell me this earlier?! How do I reduce this risk? Is it even possible?

Preeclampsia is just the gift that keeps on giving. I want to have more children but now I feel like o should just stop at one 😔

I wanted to share my preeclampsia story where everything turned out okay. I truly don’t mean to diminish anyone’s experiences. I want to share because it would have helped me to see more “positive” stories when I was first diagnosed.

This is my first pregnancy and I had no risk factors. I was diagnosed with gestational hypertension when I went into L&D for vision changes which ended up just being an ocular migraine, but this is where they caught my high BP at 31 weeks.

2 weeks later I had protein in my urine so I got the preeclampsia diagnosis. I was so stressed my entire third trimester I could not enjoy it. I was terrified of the worst case scenarios happening.

I had to go to L&D 4 times for high BP at home, a couple times getting over 160/110 (never read that high in the hospital). Due to how early I was diagnosed I thought for sure I would develop severe features and I was convinced that either a complication would happen with me, or we wouldn’t come home with a baby because of it. Preeclampsia robbed me of my third trimester and looking forward to bringing our baby home because I was too scared of something awful happening.

I was induced at 37 weeks. It almost ended in a c section due to the baby’s heart rate decelerating but baby pulled through to delivery. I’m 7 weeks postpartum and did not develop severe features.

The hospital I delivered at is doing research on preeclampsia in patients with no risk factors. I donated my placenta for research and hope I can contribute to figuring out more about preeclampsia ❤️