‘I had no idea my baby was at risk’: the battle to raise awareness about preeclampsia
WWhile pregnant with her son in 2015, Chipiliro Kalebe-Nyamongo’s pregnancy was generally smooth until she reached about 33 weeks. She began to develop high blood pressure and was admitted to the hospital for monitoring. It was during this period that Kalebe-Nyamongo became concerned when she did not feel her baby’s movements as usual.
“At first I felt the baby kicking, but it wasn’t the way he usually kicked, it felt strange,” she says. “And then I started not feeling any movement at all, and that’s when I really started to worry.
“I hadn’t felt the baby at all and it felt like I was no longer pregnant.”
This raised concerns among the medical staff and Kalebe-Nyamongo quickly prepared for an emergency caesarean section. But at one point, staff couldn’t find a heartbeat for her baby and feared the worst.
“The doctor saw the fear in my face and then said I’m sorry, but we can’t find a heartbeat,” says Kalebe-Nyamongo.
Fortunately, Kalebe-Nyamongo’s baby survived, despite being born without breathing for at least three minutes. “They tried everything to bring him back to life, but then they gave up. But it was only when they gave up that he started crying,” she says.
Kalebe-Nyamongo understood the situation was serious, but it wasn’t until she read her medical notes after her discharge that she realized she had developed preeclampsia, a condition that was life-threatening to her unborn baby at the time. had caused her placenta to detach prematurely.
“No one ever told me I had preeclampsia. Reading my own medical notes helped me understand what had happened,” she says. “I was only told it was an emergency.
“It put things into perspective for me; I was shocked that I could have lost my child if I had not been in the hospital at the right time.”
Preeclampsia is a serious pregnancy complication that causes high blood pressure and protein in the urine, and affects between 1% and 5% of pregnant women in the UK. The condition can lead to serious complications for mother and baby.
Despite being hospitalized with high blood pressure, the possibility of an increased risk of developing preeclampsia was not made clear by hospital staff. “Of course I would like to do my own research into pregnancy complications and what I might be at risk for,” she says.
“But the fact that I had high blood pressure and no healthcare provider told me this could lead to preeclampsia is concerning. I was not told this was possible or that there should have been any warning signs I should have looked out for.”
Kalebe-Nyamongo, who works as a researcher and policymaker for Healthwatch Birmingham, said that when researching black women’s experiences of pregnancy, a shared experience was that women were not told they were at risk of preeclampsia, or even were well informed. that they had the condition when they showed its symptoms and were treated for it.
“I spoke to many women who didn’t have much knowledge about preeclampsia, and that although they might have come across the term, they weren’t really informed about whether they were at high risk of developing the condition or not.” , says Kalebe-Nyamongo.
“It is important that health professionals are active in ensuring that women who are at higher risk of pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia are informed about what to recognize or look out for.”