May 28, 2012
Remembering my Soror Dawn: A Preeclampsia Victim
As a young girl growing up in a small Long Island town called Amityville, Memorial Day was a huge holiday filled with parades and barbeques. I would inevitably end up at my friend Diane’s backyard eating a hotdog along with the rest of the kids on our block. It was also a day when we made our annual trip to the cemetery to place American flags on the graves of veterans and flowers on the graves of the deceased. Well, today, in honor of both Memorial Day and Preeclampsia Awareness Week, I’d like to take time to remember all mothers and their babies who died during childbirth, especially from preeclampsia.
What is preeclampsia and why is it so deadly? Preeclampsia is a condition of pregnancy in which there is high blood pressure; swelling of the ankles, feet, or face; protein in the urine; and abnormal kidney function. This condition requires the delivery of the baby in order to preserve the mother’s life and prevent seizures and strokes. The old fashioned term for preeclampsia was toxemia and it affects 1 out of 12 pregnancies each year. Approximately 76,000 women die annually from this disease and most people know of at least someone that it has affected during pregnancy.
When I think about preeclampsia, a woman name Dawn Fleming comes to mind. Dawn was 31 years old, a member of my sorority, Delta Sigma Theta and a popular radio personality in Orlando. Although I did not know her personally, she was from my former hometown of Queens. She was gregarious, a community activist who died unexpectedly from a preeclampsia related stroke. She had recently married and delivered a baby girl 6 days before her untimely birth. Her daughter is now approximately 8 years old and will never know her mother. When I attended Dawn’s wake, I was both angry and sad. I suspected someone had inevitably missed the diagnosis and by the time she was given treatment, it was too late. Such is the case of the vast majority of preeclampsia victims. By the time a diagnosis is made, the damage is already done. In her book, You Have No Idea, celebrity Vanessa Williams and her mother, Helen, discusses preeclampsia as the reason for her paternal grandmother’s death.
In my next blog, I will describe the signs, symptoms and treatment for preeclampsia that is also described in The Smart Mother’s Guide to a Better Pregnancy. But in the meantime, I urge all of us to take a few moments to remember all the moms and babies who are no longer with us and pray that a cure for preeclampsia will one day be found.
May 4, 2009
A Mother’s Decision
Just when I think I’ve heard and seen it all, something pops up that proves me wrong. Both Amy Gates” article, Home birth advocate’s baby dies during free birth: Do you blame or show compassion? And Cate Nelson’s Unassisted childbirth one woman’s story, gave me reason to pause. Both journalists discuss the March 27th death of Janet Fraser’s infant daughter and the controversy regarding unassisted childbirth.
Fraser is an Australian advocate of the unassisted childbirth movement that encourages pregnant women to deliver babies alone without the benefit of a midwife, a doctor, or a hospital. She used phrases such as “birth rape” to describe a delivery assisted by a healthcare provider. Please. As a descendent of a slave midwife and an obstetrician I am highly offended. Birthing is in my genes. There is nothing more satisfying than assisting in the delivery of a healthy and crying baby be it by midwife or physician. Heck, even a cow gets a c/section when necessary.
Cate’s article described a woman who had an “orgasmic” unassisted delivery during the birth of her daughter and then made frozen smoothies out of the placenta that she ate for the next thirty days. A placenta smoothie?
A reality check is in order. Forty percent of women died in childbirth during the 19th century but less than one percent, or 520 women today; and even those deaths are preventable. Do we really want to proceed in reverse? Perhaps members of the “unassisted” crowd would like to trade places with women in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, who have the world’s highest number of childbirth deaths.
We need our babies born healthy and alive. All of them, without exception. The adverse outcome of the Fraser’s “unassisted” delivery speaks for itself. Here’s hoping she’ll never experience it again.
