America Has Never Taken Its Preemie Crisis Seriously
It’s been 10 years since my daughter was born. That was the best and worst day of my life.
My daughter, Layla, turns 10 years old tomorrow — it’s a bittersweet day for me. Her birthday marks the moment when the person most precious to me came into the world, but it’s also the anniversary of the worst and scariest day of my life, a time I still have nightmares about, even a decade later.
At first, my pregnancy was uneventful — some vomiting and strange food cravings, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then, around 28 weeks in, I noticed that my feet were so swollen that I couldn’t get them out of my shoes. A few days later, at a routine checkup, my OB took my blood pressure three times before she told me I had to walk across the street to the hospital. “Don’t stop anywhere,” she said. “Go now.”
It was a Thursday. After a rapid three-day decline that had my liver failing and my body so swollen that nurses couldn’t draw blood, Layla was delivered on Sunday. “You fell off a cliff,” a specialist later told me.
I was diagnosed with a severe preeclampsia that developed into HELLP syndrome — a deadly pregnancy complication that breaks down your red blood cells, causes your blood pressure to skyrocket (putting you at risk for…
