Talk:Peripartum cardiomyopathy

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Hi, I recently gave birth to my beautiful daughter on 10.01.2005, I am 43 years old and didn't think I was going to have any more children, my first daughter is 16, so it's been a big gap. My fiance has been pestering me for 10 years to have a baby and I finally gave in. I had a pretty normal pregnancy until about the 7th month when I started to get some swelling in my ankles, my blood pressure my whole life has been fairly low 90/60 so when my blood pressure started to rise a bit, the doctor said it was ok, and I kept telling him yes it seems normal but it is high for me it got to 132/90. slowly my legs and ankles started to balloon, even my hands swelled badly and one morning I woke up and my eyes were all puffy, I kept going to the doctor and he kept just saying everything is fine, my whole family and friends were saying that swelling is not normal.

I was one week overdue when I went into labour the day before I was scheduled to be induced, I ended up having a emergency ceasar after 20 hours of labour, my daughter was healthy, then on the 3rd day I was 2 hours away from leaving the hospital, I was eating lunch and I noticed I had trouble breathing, within 10 minutes I was gasping for air and there were swarms of doctors around, I was rushed to intensive care where I woke up 1 and a half days later with tubes everywhere, then transferred to coronary care, I was put on lasix for the fluid, I am on toprol-xl, captapril, magnesium, warfarin, and was on clexane injections when I left hospital.

After reading everyones stories on here, and looking back I recognize some symptoms preceding the heart failure but at the time I just shrugged it off, like coughing, pain in the back of my shoulder, and very short of breath walking up stairs which I thought was normal for pregnancy. I would love to chat with other women that have had this happen, just to have some support but I live in Australia, but it has been nearly 6 months since this happened and I feel really good, but still have anxiety attacks about not being able to breathe that was the most scariest thing to ever happen in my life. my email is positiveangel@hotmail.com if anyone would like to chat.