I'm very glad to have found this forum! I would like to share with you my experience
Riccardo was born at 36+5 weeks due to Hellp syndrome and PE, my pregnancy has been a little bit difficult: morning-sickness during the first three months and after that acid reflux especially in the evening so my diet has been quite poor at the beginning because of the nausea and after that because of the reflux. I lost weight in the first couple of months then I gained 9 kg in three months and then my weight was stable.
I had a miscarriage risk during week 21st, after travelling from Sweden to Italy for Easter - and I staid in bed for one week taking some pills to prevent contraction then the doctor said i was fine so i continued to work, quite hard I have to say. I have recently given a look to my agenda for that period and I'm surprised on how it looks like...it seems like i was not aware of being pregnant or maybe I was so full of energy?! I do not know anyway a lot of stress from work.
I had periodically checks with the midwife, every month and then every two weeks -after week 21st - and blood pressure was always quite low, urine samples were OK. I had some issues with iron but my midwife said it was nothing to be worried about.
During week 35 I had an additional ultrasound because i was not gaining weight, and everything was OK.
I started to feel a little bit tired, I had sometime headaches, but I thought they were due to the amount of work
The one Sunday I got up feeling not so well, i had a pain on the upper part of abdomen, but since it was in the upper part I thought it was nothing to worry about. So I took it easy, but the pain was always there in addition to that i started to have headache and difficulties to breath in the afternoon, i went to bed, I had a talk with my midwife, that told me just to relax, and I started to look up on a couple of books and on internet on possible causes. i found Hellp syndrome but I though "oh no, this is to bed, it could not happened to me". The pain was stronger and stronger and also the difficulty to breath, so at 2.00 during the night I call the hospital and they told me to go there for a check.
I went they did a visit and some exams, at the beginning they thought it was a problem with the colicistys but later in the morning they told me it was Hellp syndrome and they recommended to delivery the baby.
Since the variation of blood and liver values was not so fast they were able to induce the labor and it worked at the first trial, so at 2.00 am of the next day Riccardo was born and we were both fine.
After the delivery they start to speak also about pre-eclampsia, I think it was mainly due to proteinuria since the blood pressure was not so high (90/130).
Anyway I consider myself really lucky, since everything was so fast, I did not have even time to understand what was going on and to think about risks, and everything went well!!!
Now my big concern is what could happen if I get pregnant again, and I really would like to have another baby as soon as possible -since I'm almost 36 .
Thanks for reading
Cheers
Elisabetta