When your lofty postpartum goals end up flying into the sun (and burning).

This is a preface to eventual future posts.

When you’re in the third trimester, you’re planning for the fourth trimester. No matter how much you plan and create space for what’s to come: the meals, the supplies, the follow-up doctors visits, trying to sleep, etc. — it’s never exactly what you planned for. At least for me it wasn’t.

Social media had drilled it into my head how sacred this time was, how precious and how much I needed to protect it and get as much support as possible. If i didn’t do those things and have the ideal perfect 40 days — I would be a failure.

What you don’t plan for, is having your blood pressure spike to 190/112 — and being told by the advice nurse that you waited and hour to get a hold of, that you need to be admitted immediately or you could suffer a stroke or heart attack.

You don’t plan to have to pack a hospital go bag, again.

You don’t plan to be laid up in a hospital for 5 days watching the peaks and valleys of your blood pressure on a monitor, while you weep over the beauty of your newborn child.

You don’t plan for the lead feeling in your veins while you get a magnesium drip for 24 hours.

You don’t plan for severe postpartum preeclampsia.

You don’t plan for the intrusive thoughts of what will happen to my baby if I die?