My Birthing Experiences: A Story of Joy, Heartbreak, Fear, and an Unimaginable Love

For as long as I can remember, there are only 2 things I have ever been 100% sure about: I wanted to work for NASA and I wanted to be a mom. I was born to be a mom, and I had no problem letting everyone around me know that one day, preferably while I was in my early 20s, I was going to have a baby.

Nothing can prepare you for the gut-wrenching reality of your doctor telling you that you may not be able to have any more children.

Growing up I was always very willy-nilly about my health. You know how adults always say kids think they are invincible? Well, that was me as a kid, teenager, and young adult. In high school I was a very active tennis player and a horrible eater. I was as skinny as they come, even though I ate pizza and drank coke almost every single day. It was the 5 hours of tennis every single day in the Texas heat that kept me thin and in the best shape of my life.

When I was 16, I had my first operation. Within the span of a year I had an orthoscopic surgery on my left knee to correct a torn meniscus, and I also had a L5-S1 discectomy to correct an injury to my back. Both of these events occurred due to my overly strenuous tennis playing combined with very poor strength training. Neither of those surgeries scared me, since I was still that young invincible athlete. Over the next few years I would undergo 3 more surgeries: torn miniscus in my right knee, L5-S1 fusion in my lower back, and right SI joint fusion in my hip. I was also diagnosed with a mild heart condition at 22 years old (my heart beat faster than it should and irregularly), but even that didn’t scare me.

Time for Baby #1: The year was 2016, and I was 25 years old.

Fast forward to 2015. I got the job at NASA and had recently gotten married, so I was ready to start making babies. After suffering 2 miscarriages, I was ready to try again to have a baby with my new husband. I stopped taking my heart medication (a beta blocker), since my cardiologist said it could affect a developing fetus, and he warned me that I may feel some affects of stopping the medication. Of course, I thought I could handle 9 months without it. I quickly got pregnant and I was over the moon with excitement and anticipation. Little did I know, that excitement would quickly turn into a crippling fear.

When I was only 6 weeks pregnant, about a week after the ClearBlue Digital test read “pregnant”, I suffered my first major cardiac episode. I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance from the Johnson Space Center clinic where I passed out with a resting heart rate of 170. The next few hours in the ER at Houston Methodist Clear Lake were tense; the ER doctor was trying to control my heart rate while also trying not to stop my heart. He administered a medication that had the potential to stop my heart, and in case it had to be restarted they rolled in a crash cart and had multiple nurses staring at me as he slowly pushed the syringe of fluid into my IV. Luckily my heart didn’t stop; I had some mild chest pain that quickly went away and my heart rate began to slow down. I was kept in the hospital overnight for observation, and when the cardiologist came in to see me the next morning he told me I was fine, my life was not at risk, and I might have to put up with these episodes every once in a while until the pregnancy is over. I was relieved that my life was not at risk, but terrified about that experience happening again. Could it be worse next time? Could it happen while I’m at my desk at work and no one is around to help me? Or even worse, could it happen while I’m driving and cause me to pass out at the wheel? There were so many uncertainties, however I was basically told to just “deal with it”.

Over the next several months of my pregnancy I was in and out of hospital ERs. My OBGYN advised me to go to the ER if my heart rate spiked again, just to make sure everything is ok. The good news was I reached my medical plan’s deductible by February that year! The bad news was my fear grew with every hospital visit. Even though each time the ER doctor told me I was ok to go home, I was terrified and anticipating the next time my heart rate would spike and I’d be back in that cold, stiff bed again where it felt like this nightmare would never end. My OBGYN had me also seeing a Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist regularly, with an ultrasound every 4 weeks to make sure baby was not being affected. By this time we knew we were expecting a girl, and her name was going to be Carina.

Fast forward to when I was 34 weeks pregnant. I went in for one of my now bi-weekly ultrasounds and my amniotic fluid was low. My doctor was worried my water may have broken, so he sent me to Labor & Delivery. After several tests were run, it was determined that my water had not broken yet but I was having some pretty frequent and strong contractions. My doctors decided to give me a round of 2 steroid injections in case the baby decided to come early; the steroids were to help her lungs develop quickly so she would hopefully not have any trouble breathing after birth.

At 36 weeks pregnant, I went in for one of my usual ultrasounds. I was sitting in the waiting room, fantasizing about holding my baby in my arms while also making a mental list of all of the things we needed to get done before my scheduled c-section in one week. The list included making my “go bag” (which, given how this pregnancy was going I should have had packed by the beginning of my third trimester), making and freezing some quick meals we could eat when we are sleep deprived and not wanting to cook, and making sure the sink was empty of dishes and the house was clean so we would come home from the hospital to a nice clean house. The ultrasound tech finally called me back and we started the scan. Pretty much all of the ultrasound techs knew me by name, since I had been going there so often for scans. It was nice, because they would talk openly with me and joke around, and that made me feel more at ease. But when this particular scan started, the tech’s expression turned quickly from whimsical to worried. He told me to wait while he sped out of the room to go and fetch the doctor. Not more than 30 seconds later the doctor came in, squeezed more warm jelly on my belly, and ran the probe around the outer diameter of my baby bump. Seconds later he looks at me and says “your amniotic fluid level is dangerously low, you need to go to the hospital right now and have this baby”.

My heart sunk in my chest. It felt like the world had stopped spinning, time had stopped ticking, and all I could feel was my pounding heartbeat in my throat. I wasn’t going to have time to pack a perfect go-bag, or make sure the house was clean, or clean all of the dirty dishes in the sink. I wasn’t going to have another week to mentally prepare for the arrival of my first child; a cold anxiety flooded through my body as I imagined holding a tiny life in my arms within the next couple of hours. I called my husband, he had to leave his shift in NASA JSC’s Mission Control to meet me at home so we could head to the hospital together. Once we got to the hospital, everything happened very quickly. Within an hour I was in the operating room, sitting on the side of the operating table hunched over and grabbing a nurses shoulders as the anesthesiologist slowly inserted the catheter for the spinal block. A few minutes later, my husband entered the operating room fully dressed in his bunny suit and the surgeons started to cut. A few minutes later, I heard my baby girl’s first cry. She was beautiful and healthy, and everyone was relieved. We thought all of the worrying was over and it was time to start enjoying our new baby Carina.

We would have never guessed that the scariest, most dangerous part of my pregnancy was yet to happen.

Everything went perfectly after Carina’s birth. We were both discharged 2 days after my c-section and we were all looking forward to life at home with our baby. The first couple of nights were rough with her waking up every 2-3 hours to eat, and there were days when I would forget to feed myself. We took Carina to her first pediatrician appointment that Friday when she was 5 days old. She was continuing to do great, but the doctor mentioned that I didn’t look so good. I told her that I wasn’t eating much and I was feeling like I was starting to get sick. She urged me to go to the doctor that day, so after we left her office we went straight to a clinic so I could be seen. They ran blood tests and looked at my vitals, and the doctor determined I was fine although my blood pressure was a little high. He attributed my higher BP to just having surgery and sent me on my way. The next day I was continuing to feel bad so I checked my blood pressure. It was in the 160s/90s, so I decided to go to the ER to get checked out. The ER doctor ran blood tests, urine tests, and checked my blood pressure. This time, my BP was 145/100. He said other than the higher BP all of my other labs came back completely normal. He, like the clinic doctor, attributed my higher BP to recovering from surgery. I was discharged and went home feeling like there was more going on and frustrated that no one could tell me more than “you’re just recovering from surgery”.

My worst fears became reality…

I went through the next couple of days living in a blur, worried that I could drop dead at any moment. My worst fears became reality beginning at around 2am Tuesday morning, just 8 days after giving birth. I was laying in bed trying to get some sleep while my husband held our baby, and I was suddenly awoken by an intense dizziness and odd feeling in my chest. I sat up and took my blood pressure. The reading…215/115. I immediately told my husband to call 911. When the EMTs arrived, they said I had “slightly” elevated blood pressure (their reading was 185/100, which is still medically considered a hypertensive crisis…so their verbiage of “slightly” only slightly annoyed me) and drove me to the emergency room. It was like I was living the same moment for the third time, as the ER doctor ran all of the same tests as my last 2 visits. After all of the results came in, he told me exactly what I had been told 2 times before…he wanted me to go home and keep an eye on my blood pressure, as the rise is most likely due to post-op/new-mommy stress. By that point, I had enough of doctors dismissing my concerns. I yelled “I do NOT feel safe going home. If I go home, I’m going to die. So unless you want my death on your hands, call my OB right now and see what she says”. He had a bit of a blank look on his face (poor guy couldn’t have been much older than me), but he shook his head and agreed to call my OB. After the doctor left, the nurse came by my side, touched my arm and said “he may seem nervous and he may not be giving you the answers you want, but I know he is a good doctor” and she walked out of the room. Maybe I should have taken her words more to heart, but at that point I wasn’t scared…I was just plain mad.

Minutes later, the ER doctor came rushing in and said “your OB believes you have severe postpartum pre-eclampsia, and she wants you up on the OB floor to start treatment STAT. Try to stay calm”. While this sent shivers into my bones, thinking that I could be on the verge of full-on eclampsia and start having seizures, part of me felt a wave of calmness since FINALLY I was being listened to and would be given treatment. They got me up to the 4th floor quickly and the nurses rushed in several bags of magnesium. Of course, being the total control freak I was, I started googling “magnesium treatment for pre-eclampsia” and I had a slew of questions for them. Midway through my second question one of the nurses stopped me and said “ma’am, you need to stop reading, lay down, and remain as calm as possible….we are trying to stop you from having seizures, and stressing out about this medication is only going to make your situation worse”. I appreciated her bluntness, so I put down my phone. I took off my glasses. I laid back in the bed. The next 36 hours were the worst hours of my life.

I had called my mom in the ambulance and asked her if she could come watch the baby so my husband could be in the hospital with me (back then, she lived only about 40 minutes away). She came quickly and my husband was with me in the hospital up until I got hooked up to the magnesium and began my treatment. At that point, he went back home to the baby. The next 36 hours I laid alone in my hospital bed, my brain running full speed the whole time. The magnesium was slowly eating away at my nervous system (the way it works is it relaxes all of your nerves in your body and lowers your blood pressure). Soon after I started treatment, my eyesight worsened; my glasses were useless. Hours later, I could barely sip water without it spilling out of my mouth. After about 12 hours, I couldn’t even get up out of bed to go to the bathroom because my legs would just give out. I laid in silence, starring at the wall in front of me. The nurse asked me if I wanted to watch tv or if I wanted a magazine, and the only word I could muster was “no”. I knew this treatment was going to save my life, but at the same time it made me feel like I was dying. I was so worried my heart would stop if I fell asleep, so I didn’t sleep a wink for those 36 hours. The nurses told me I should be taking the opportunity to sleep as much as possible, since my baby wasn’t there to wake me up every 2 hours. But all I could do was stare at the empty wall in front of me and think about whether or not I was ever going to see my baby again. I distinctly remember beginning to cry and saying out-loud “dear God, if you can hear me, please give me the strength to make it through this so I can see my baby again…please…please…if I make it through this, I will be a better person. I’ll do more volunteer work, I’ll be more patient, I’ll give 110% of myself to my daughter. Just please let me survive this.”

Spoiler alert: I survived. I regained the feeling in my legs. My eyesight came back. I was able to chew and swallow food again. And, best of all, after the most horrendous 36 hours of my life, I was able to go home to my baby girl. It took about a month for my blood pressure to return fully to normal. In those 36 hours, I lost almost 15 pounds. All fluid retention. Unfortunately, this caused me to loose my breastmilk supply. But, that was a price I would gladly pay in exchange for my life.

Time for Baby #2: The year was 2019, and I was 28 years old.

From the birth of my first daughter till 2019, a lot had happened in my life. I got divorced when my daughter was 1, was a single mom for about a year, then met/fell in love with/married the man who is now my husband, and we built a house and moved in at the end of 2018. We both immediately knew we wanted more kids (he has a son with his ex-wife, who is now 13 years old) so we didn’t hesitate to start trying to get pregnant right after we got engaged, thinking it may take a little time. Well….NOPE! It happened almost right away, and when we got married in March of 2019 I was already 13 weeks pregnant with our daughter. Aside from some intense and long-lasting morning sickness and being diagnosed with borderline polyhydramnios (excess amniotic fluid), I had a pretty picture-perfect first and second trimester. I was very active during this pregnancy, since I had to chase after my 3 year old. The second time around also seemed a bit easier to me because I knew more of what to expect. This time, I stayed on my beta blocker from the beginning, and it made me feel so much better. By 27 weeks, I was convinced this was going to be a pretty easy pregnancy.

At 27 weeks, I visited an Urgent Care on a Friday afternoon because I suspected I had a UTI (which are very common during pregnancy). The doctor told me my blood pressure was a bit high, 150/85, and I had protein in my urine (another red flag for pre-eclampsia, but also could be due to the UTI). He suggested I follow up with my OB in case it is the beginning of pre-eclampsia. I started to worry a little bit, but tried to stay calm as I dialed my OB’s office while sitting in my car in the parking lot of the Urgent Care. They were able to see me right away, and I was in front of her in about an hour. My BP at her office was lower, about 135/80. My doctor did not seem concerned, and she instructed me to just keep an eye on it.

A few weeks went by and I felt perfectly fine (besides carrying around a belly the size of a small planet and wanting to eat everything I saw). But at 31 weeks, I had an appointment with my OB and my BP was high again, and there was more protein in my urine. At that point, the doctor decided to do a 24-hour urine collection to determine if it was pre-eclampsia. And…yup…the test came back positive for pre-eclamptic levels. So, once again, I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and put on bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy. The next 3 weeks were filled with doctors appointments twice a week (one with my regular OB and one with my maternal fetal specialist who did my ultrasounds) to keep a close eye on the baby and I. No one had any idea when I would need to deliver, but eventually they settled on “no later than 36 weeks”. My OB had instructed me to act like I was taking a vacation…take the time to relax, get a mani/pedi, get a massage, anything to keep my stress levels down, and keep a log of my blood pressure readings 4 times a day. I was comforted in knowing that my doctors were keeping such a strict eye on me, but I was also once again scared for my life. Luckily, my sweet Carina (now 3 years old) had no idea anything was wrong with her mommy or her soon-to-be baby sister. During this “vacation”, I snuggled a lot with Carina and spent as much one on one time with her as possible, as I knew chances to do that were going to dramatically decrease once the baby came.

One night, when I was 34 weeks and 2 days along, Carina came into our room and said she didn’t feel good. She felt warm to the touch, so I got up out of bed to go get the thermometer. As soon as I stood up, I knew something wasn’t right. I remained calm, took her temperature (it read 101.5), asked my husband to get her a dose of Tylenol, and I went straight to my chair in the corner of the room where the blood pressure cuff lived. I took my blood pressure. 172/104. I walked back over to the bed, laid down and got under the covers next to my daughter and my husband. After about 30 seconds of laying down, I said “Mark, we need to go to the hospital.”

Luckily my mother had been visiting and decided she was going to stay with us until the baby came (she no longer lived only 40 minutes away, but instead almost 5 hours away). She stayed home with my daughter and Mark and I calmly made our way to the Labor & Delivery ER. They checked us in, put me in a bed and took my blood pressure. 135/85. I said “What the heck?! Why was it high at home and now it’s so much lower?! I guess being in a hospital calmed me down…” The nurse laughed and said “the hospital usually has the opposite affect on people!” Well, at that point I felt silly for going to the hospital. Even though I had a high BP reading, I was sure that wasn’t going to make my doctor want to deliver the baby that day after seeing how relatively low my BP was at the hospital.

Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a doctor, because I was WRONG. We got to the hospital at around 4:30am. By 7am they said my OB was going to speak with my MFM specialist. By 8am they moved me to a more permanent room for observation. By 10am a nurse came in and said “your doctor will be here in an hour, the baby is coming out today. She doesn’t want to wait and take any more chances.” I believe the exact words out of my mouth were “holy shit, ok then”. I looked at my husband, and we exchanged a look that I can only describe as a mixture of equal parts excitement and equal parts terror. There was no time for emotions, because at 11:45am Mia was born via c-section and came out at 6 pounds 2 ounces (pretty darn big for a 34-weeker!). Unfortunately, due to her being 6 weeks premature, I was not able to hold or even see her as she was quickly whisked away to the NICU. I think I was a little too out of it from the spinal block, and whatever else the anesthesiologist was pushing into my IV to keep me calm, to really process the fact that my baby was already so far away from me, but I still managed to demand my husband go back there with her. I was taken back to my room for recovery and to be started on the magnesium treatment for pre-eclampsia.

About 12 hours after Mia was born, I finally regained enough feeling in my legs to roll myself out of bed and into a wheelchair so I could go visit Mia in the NICU (my husband had already been there many times, as I instructed him to be my eyes and ears in there). As I was wheeled down the hallway I could already feel my body telling me “you idiot, get back to bed, you shouldn’t be vertical yet”. But I didn’t care. The only thing that was going to stop me from seeing my baby was if my body totally gave out and I passed out onto the floor in front of me. We got to the NICU, and I laid eyes on my baby girl for the first time. She had a CPAP machine connected to her nose, a feeding tube in her mouth going down to her stomach, and a greasy gel covering her eyelids. Looking at her I couldn’t help but think “why couldn’t I have held on for a little bit longer? Why couldn’t I make it to 36 weeks, because then she probably wouldn’t have needed all of this help?” But, if I would have muscled through to 36 weeks, my condition could have gotten worse and she may have been left without a mother. The nurse put her on my shoulder, and I gave her the tightest hug I felt like I could give her without hurting her. I could only stand to hold her for about a minute before I got worried I would pass out and drop her, so I handed her back off and told her I would be back to see her as soon as I could.

Mia rocked her time in the NICU. She passed every test and was finally released 8 days after she was born. Oh, I also recovered well too.

At my 6 week post-op appointment, my doctor asked me if I was thinking of ever getting pregnant again. Obviously, I knew why she was asking. I immediately knew she didn’t think I should get pregnant again. We had a brief conversation about how my husband and I needed time to adjust to our new life before deciding, but that was a lie. I knew in my heart that I wanted one more baby, and it was blatant that my husband also would like to have one more baby. Nothing can prepare you for the gut-wrenching reality of your doctor telling you that you may not be able to have any more children, but that is essentially what happened. She told me how lucky we are that Mia turned out fine and I recovered well, and that there was a very real chance that it may not have turned out that way. She urged me to think very, very, very hard about whether or not I would want to try again, because the next time we may not end up being so lucky.

I’m not looking for pity.

I’m not looking for pity, or for people to comment and say “oh you poor thing…” The whole point of me sharing my birthing stories with the world is to show women who don’t have the picture-perfect pregnancy that it is OH-KAY. We all have our struggles. Those women out there who have been able to have perfect and blissful pregnancies and births, I am so incredibly happy for you. For those of you who haven’t, I’m here for you.

Another reason why I decided to share my stories is because I want to encourage women to speak up during pregnancy when they aren’t quite sure what’s going on, or especially if they think something doesn’t feel right. YOU are your biggest advocate when it comes to your body and your health. YOU know yourself better than any doctor does, just like I KNEW something was wrong even if ER doctors kept telling me I was fine. If I didn’t stick up for myself and make demands, I may not be here to write this story.

PS: I would do these experiences all over again with the same outcome, because my baby girls are nothing short of amazing. I credit my survival and my daughters’ survival to my incredible doctors (my OB and my MFM specialist) who always listened to me when I thought something was wrong, along with the awesome nurses at the hospital I delivered at and where I received my treatments.

PSS: this whole being-pregnant-and-giving-birth thing that women do…it’s hard, and we are all total rockstars.