On Christmas evening of 2023 at 8:00pm I was sitting at the kitchen table chatting with my family. I stood up from my chair to find a pool of blood.
My parents called 911 as I was bleeding all over the kitchen floor, clots pouring out of me. I remember not being in any pain and just forcing myself to try and stay calm. I knew that stress and panic would make everything worse as I was only 32 weeks pregnant.

The ambulance arrived and a team of paramedics took my vitals as we raced to the closest hospital. Laying in the back, still losing a lot of blood, they took my blood pressure which is roughly reading 177/120. At that moment I remember thinking “are we going to die?”

We entered our hospital room and got hooked up to the monitors… we finally got a heart beat on baby. The biggest relief in the world.
My doctor for the evening entered the room and diagnosed me with preeclampsia.. the game plan was to let baby determine the next steps. The best case scenario was that I would stay pregnant until 34 weeks and would have a scheduled c section.

About 2 hours passed and baby was still sounding good but unfortunately i was losing way too much blood.. I was losing consciousness and was very pale. I started throwing up and right as that happened, we lost the heartbeat on baby.

We RAN to the OR - iodine being dumped on me as a team of doctors raced down the hallway prepping for my STAT section. I was knocked out and by the grace of God, me and our Christmas baby boy, Luke, survived. He is a miracle. Born at 11:34pm, 4lbs 1oz and 17 inches long. We spent the next 30 days in the NICU with an incredible team of nurses and doctors. Luke and I made nothing but progress. We did have some scary challenges along the way which included an IVH grade 1 and then a transfer to a different hospital for Luke to get a PIC line procedure done. Through all of that though, we have so much to be grateful for.
I spent 6 days in the hospital learning about what happened to me. I had preeclampsia which lead to a placental abruption. Those clots were pieces of my placenta that was detaching from my uterine wall. The scariest part of everything is how fast and hard preeclampsia hit. I didn’t experience symptoms until a week prior. I had extreme swelling, a vision change, high blood pressure - all things that for some reason my OB wasn’t concerned about.

I hope every pregnant patient out there is honest with their doctors and more importantly, that they trust their doctors to take care of them. I have since switched doctors and am hopeful for my next pregnancy. I am not letting this scare me. I am more than my trauma. We are healthy and thriving and continue to focus on the future. As I said, we have so much to be grateful for.