Stephanie Arnold was about to meet her second son, Jacob. It should have been a happy moment for her, but instead she was on the brink of death.
Stephanie said that during her pregnancy, she had six detailed visions of dying in childbirth.
She was so convinced that it was going to be her fate that she said goodbye to her husband and her daughter.
When she was 20 weeks pregnant, she found out she had placenta previa, which occurs when the placenta grows on top of the cervix.
She looked it up, and found that this condition could turn into placenta accrete, which can cause hemorrhaging and require an emergency hysterectomy.
She had visions that was going to happen to her, which caused the doctor to tell her she’d have to give birth via C-section.
Though she told doctors several times that she was convinced she had placenta accrete, they told her she was fine. However, one doctor put a note saying that during the delivery, extra blood should be on file just in case.
“That effectively saved my life,” said Stephanie.
She didn’t end up suffering placenta accrete during delivery, but she did have an amniotic fluid embolism. These can cause cardiac arrest, hemorrhage, and acute respiratory arrest system. There’s an 80 percent mortality rate among mothers who suffer it.
But doctors, despite insisting that Stephanie was fine, were prepared.
When her heart stopped, doctors were able to revive her. And hours later, when she was still hemorrhaging, they discovered that the accrete that she was so afraid of was there, and they had to perform a hysterectomy.
She went into a medically induced coma for six days after that, and while doctors were uncertain, she recovered perfectly, and could eventually remember every detail of her delivery.
Her advice? “If you sense something, say something. It’s so important—even if you think you’re crazy.”
