My first pregnancy was in 2018 and it was healthy and beautiful. After birth was when things got hard and scary. Hours after giving birth, I experienced the worst headache of my life.
My mom has a medical background and asked the nurse on duty to check my blood pressure because she knew that was a sign of high blood pressure. The nurse ignored us. So my mom and husband asked her to give me some Tylenol and the nurse still ignored us. I was lying in so much pain, I couldn’t even hold my baby. Finally, the nurses changed shifts. When the new nurse introduced herself, she was warm and kind. My mother and husband explained what was happening to me. She immediately checked my blood pressure, got me Tylenol, and told us that I was suffering from postpartum preeclampsia. The nurse gave me potassium intravenously for the remaining 2.5 days I was in the hospital to treat it.
Thank God I’m here to share my story, and I’m grateful that my mom and husband advocated for me and my maternal health.
Black Maternal Health Week means a lot to me because we deserve to have healthy pregnancies, labor & delivery, and postpartum experiences. Having the right advocates in the hospital as a mother is a matter of life and death. We all deserve to have people who advocate for our right to live.
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