Hi my name is Alicia, I am 36yrs old and have 2 beautiful sons, a loving husband and a wonderful supportive family and set of friends. On the 13th August 2016 we all experienced something that we never thought would happen to us. After giving birth to my second son by caesarean I had a pulmonary embolism, that would see me almost lose my life.
Dan and I married on the 17th July 2015. We had our son Oliver in 2009 and our journey together was ready for the next step. Like most married couples we had a week away and on returning I found out I was pregnant. Weeks went by but unfortunately at 10 weeks we lost our baby. It was heart breaking and something that I thought I would never come back from. I know that I am not the only one to have experienced a miscarriage but for me it was tough. We fortunately were very lucky and after only a few short months I was lucky enough to fall pregnant again. Our dreams had come true again.
The first few months of the pregnancy were as good as any pregnancy can be. I remembered back to when I fell pregnant with Oliver, how well I felt, no sickness, aches or pains. This time around was different I felt sick all morning, I was tired and struggled with my IBS symptoms a lot. You hear so many stories of people saying how differently you carry girls and boys, as I was feeling so awful on the run up to the gender scan I wondered if this time we would be having a girl. If you read my intro you will know that this was not the case. Another boy, my heart was already full of love for him.
Throughout the pregnancy I had really suffered with shortness of breath. At the time we lived in a first floor flat and I was finding by the time I reached the top of one flight of steps I was out of breath. One day I decided that actually I wasn’t feeling great and so took myself off to the doctor. He was a locum doctor who checked me over and unfortunately wasn’t really impressed with my SATS and other observations and symptoms. He sent me straight off to the local hospital. I rang Dan and picked him up on the way and we went to have a check-up. We spent most of the day in the hospital having test after test. I had a blood test called a D DIMER, which I was told is common for it to come back positive in pregnant women. I had a chest x ray and was hooked up to a SATs machine and asked to walk around the ward. After a few hours we finally saw the doctor who talked us through everything. Her conclusion was the baby was laying awkwardly and pushing my lungs up, reducing my lung capacity, making it trickier for me to catch my breath. She was the doctor so she must be right. This process happened a second time. Having gone to see my consultant for regular maternity appointment, she also sent me back to the hospital for tests. This time only the blood test was done and SATs were monitored.
As time went on and the more pregnant, I became, Dan and I decided that on the 1st July 2016 it was time for me to go on to early maternity leave. I worked in a school with children with profound physical and learning disabilities and working was not helping the breathlessness. At last, it was time to put my feet up and get ready to welcome baby. A few weeks after leaving work I started to get reduced movement with baby. After a few more trips to the hospital, they decided that on the 11th August 2016 they would bring me in for early induction. We packed up our bags and packed Oliver off to my Mums. I was induced and we spent the next 24hours doing everything we could to get this baby out. On the morning of the 12th, we were taken into the delivery suit, where we had a long conversation about how this baby was coming. As I had had Oliver by emergency c section and I already had reduced movement with this baby, it was decided that this bundle of joy would also be brought into the world via a caesarean delivery.
This is where it gets hazy. After having the epidural my memories are few. I have no memories of the delivery, no memories of holding my new baby for the first time. The next memory I have is waking up in what I now know to be Intensive Care. After having had my beautiful baby boy who we had decided to name Ruben, I had fallen ill. What I know from being told by medical professionals and family is, a short while after having Ruben I kept vomiting, they aren’t sure why, I think everyone just put it down to having not eaten and the drugs. In the early hours of the morning, I got out of bed and made my way to the nurse’s station, this is when I collapsed and became unconscious. The next part is the scariest bit and the bit I always find hard to say out loud. I went into cardiac arrest; it took the doctors 20 mins to bring me back around for me to then go back into cardiac arrest for another 40mins. All in all, the doctors worked on me for over an hour trying to get me back into a stable condition. My husband, family and very close friends were all informed and told to make their way to the hospital as things were not looking good.
Two days later was when I woke up, dazed and confused. After seeing my mum, Dan and my sister and trying to figure out what had happened I was finally allowed to see my new born baby. The hospital had been kind enough to let him stay in their NICU department whilst my family had tried to get their heads around what had happened.
A few days went by and I seemed to float in and out of consciousness. I ended up contracting a super bug and needing to be put into a side room, along side that I continued to have a bleed that the hospital could not get under control. In the early hours of the morning, the decision was made for me to be transferred to St Georges hospital in London. On arrival at St Georges, I was fitted with an IVC filter to catch any more clots that maybe floating around, I was also placed on a filtration system as my kidneys were not working normally. I spent 7 days in London, my mum, Dan and friends came to visit and soon it was time for me to head back to the hospital closer to home. The next week or so was all about building myself back up. As I was closer to home, I was able to see the children everyday and friends and more family were able to visit. Eventually I was moved to a general ward and a week later I was allowed to go home.
During the hospital stay I was put onto warfarin and had to have a daily dose of clexane too. My dose of warfarin changed weekly and I remained on the clexane for a good 2-3 months. Eventually my consultant put me on to rivaroxaban instead and my blood levels worked themselves out. I had the IVC filter removed 10 weeks after it was put in and had regular check ups and test to make sure everything was still as it should be.
Now almost 5 years later I no longer see my consultant every six months, and I am back at work fulltime. The one thing that I hope comes out of this story is, please don’t ignore how you are feeling. If you are pregnant or know someone that is and you or they get breathless when you do the smallest of activities, please don’t ignore it. Go to your GP, insist on getting more tests. If I had done those things, we as a family may not have gone through what we did and I would not have had to fight for my life. Thank you for reading, getting the word out there is so important to me.