Our journey to getting pregnant took a little over two years. Infertility is extremely difficult to go through especially working as a labor and delivery nurse. Being surrounded by pregnancy made it really hard to feel like my body wasn’t failing me. I don’t wish infertility on anyone. We were so excited when we found out we were expecting.

I had a pretty uncomplicated pregnancy up until the start of my 3rd trimester. I actually loved being pregnant until the symptoms started to hit. I started noticing swelling pretty much everywhere and developed carpal tunnel making my job as a nurse pretty difficult when I had very little sensations in my fingers. In my head I knew things were not looking good but I really didn’t want to believe it. It took so long to get pregnant and I just really wanted to enjoy my pregnancy.

Life had other plans. My swelling became so bad, like gained 25 lbs in one week bad. My blood pressure was starting to become elevated, and labs were looking a little wonky. I was in and out of triage until finally I was admitted to antepartum for good at 32 weeks. As a labor nurse, I knew what was coming. I take care of patients every week with preeclampsia but it’s a little different when you are the one in the bed.

I took a quick turn for the worst the night I was admitted. I never experience the big symptoms that people think of when it comes to preeclampsia. No headache, no vision changes, and no right upper quadrant pain (liver) but boy did I have horrible back pain. Turns out I had an acute kidney injury. I couldn’t stop throwing up. My labs completely tanked in a matter of hours. My platelets dropped into the 50s. I was really sick. They called for an emergency c/s.

Our son Finnegan was born on July 6, 2025. My c/s went okay but I had a very rough recovery. Unfortunately I don’t remember much of the first couple days. I was in a lot of pain from a general c/s and the acute kidney injury. I was in and out of it. I had a lot of complications and was admitted for over a week. It kills me that I don’t remember meeting my son for the first time. I see pictures but have no memories of it.

Finnegan was doing great for being born at 32 weeks but he did end up staying in the NICU for over 40 days. Having a baby in the NICU was so much more difficult than I thought. It gave me a new perspective on what some of my patients go through. It’s a pain you don’t really understand until you go through it.

It’s been almost a year since he was born and honestly I’m still healing. I mourn the loss of losing out on my 3rd trimester, not being awake and aware when my son was born, and missing out on the normal newborn experience most people go through. It’s extremely lonely having a baby in the NICU. Friends and family checked in at first but as time when on it felt like we were alone.

It was really hard to go back to my job as an L&D nurse. I still have moments at work that trigger me. I’m glad that I’m able to relate to patients so they don’t feel alone. I hope that I will continue to heal as time goes on. Finn is the best thing that ever happened to me and I love being a mom but I’m terrified on getting preeclampsia again. I don’t want to go through that trauma again.
I also want to say thank you to my amazing partner that helped me through everything. He had to be torn between a wife that was very ill and a preterm baby in the NICU. My heart goes out to all the moms and partners that experience preeclampsia. I hope that more research in the future will help identify and treat preeclampsia sooner.