OCTOBER 2022

PATIENT VOICES

"I never thought that childbirth could be life or death, but even nowadays, anything could happen."

In this story, a mother describes her experience with high-risk pregnancy due to a condition that affects her blood’s ability to clot. After experiencing massive and sudden blood loss during delivery of her third child, she had an emergency hysterectomy and spent twelve days in the intensive care unit (ICU). Her son was cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and, because of this, she was not able to see her baby for three days after delivery. She believes that this experience could have been avoided had she received more attentive care. However, she also describes kind healthcare providers, like a nurse who took her – bed and all – to the NICU so she could hold her son; these attentive providers had a huge, positive impact on her post-partum experience.