On the 8th December 2020, my challenging, lock-down first pregnancy came to an abrupt end and my beautiful baby boy Saxon Ray entered the world. 

I'd spent the day of Saturday 5th December feeling particularly unwell and things just didn't seem right. I could barely move and started feeling terribly sick, I was questioning if the baby was moving as much as normal, he hadn't played his usual evening football match in my uterus! As advised we phoned the local midwife helpline. As I hung up and headed upstairs to add some last-minute bits to the bags that had been packed for weeks. Tears were streaming down my face as I let go of my planned dream of a water birth. Although at this point I didn't know what was wrong, my gut was telling me that this was it. I knew I was going to be induced and that I wouldn't be coming home that night. Little did I know that I would actually spend 13 nights in the hospital and things would be a lot worse than I was imagining. 

We arrived at the hospital and as expected Chris wasn't allowed in with me. Despite not being allowed to any of the appointments or scans it was still an agonising blow for him. As we sat together in the freezing car outside waiting for the test results, we were finally informed at 1.30am that I had developed pre-eclampsia; and I needed to be induced. After a teary goodbye, I headed into the hospital alone and tried to get my head around what was happening. The next couple of days played out like millions of induction stories, but unfortunately, my big, stubborn boy wasn't quite ready to enter the frosty winter world. After a rough 48 hours, sepsis called time of my efforts and I was rushed in for an emergency c-section. 

The last thing I remember was breastfeeding my baby for the first time whilst they finished up in the theatre and smiling at Chris as he headed out to phone the family. According to the medical team, I had an eclamptic seizure, a rare reaction to pre-eclampsia that can happen up to 10 days after the birth, who knew! For half an hour my body fought the seizure until I finally passed slowly into unconsciousness. For the next 24 hours, the team tried to figure out what had happened and my poor Chris provided the care for our baby that we had been expecting to be doing together. 

Endless tests diagnosed kidney failure, liver failure and heart failure. I also had a collapsed lung due to the volume of water my body had retained. Luckily Saxon was given a clean bill of health and every day I am grateful that he was spared the suffering that can come with this dreaded disease. We were discharged from the hospital days before Christmas and I started the long journey to recovery, whilst embracing my new life as a mother, and trying to process what had happened. I remember one particular moment when Chris and I sat on the sofa, cuddling our new baby and our cat, sobbing for the pain and fear we had felt but also overwhelmed with relief to be together finally in that moment. 

Just short of 12 months after this crazy life-changing event I received the news from my cardiologist that my final MRI showed that my heart had recovered and is completely back normal. This was the last piece of the news we were waiting for. We've just celebrated Saxon's second birthday and I want to both celebrate the fact that we survived and also raise awareness for this terrible disease. The team that cared for us in the hospital were unbelievable, especially in the midst of a global pandemic.

It has always been my wish to run a Marathon, in fact when I found out I was pregnant last year I had already started a training programme because I wanted to complete one before I turned 40!  When Action on Pre-Eclampsia announced they had places available on their special 30th-anniversary team my no longer dodgy heart skipped a beat and I knew I wanted to get involved. This was before I found out that globally every 6 minutes a woman dies from pre-eclampsia.

Your support will help Action on Pre-eclampsia (also known as APEC) raise public and professional awareness of pre-eclampsia, improve care, and ease or prevent physical and emotional suffering caused by the disease. THANK YOU so much!! 

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