The advice you need
Heartbreaker
But my little girl gave me reason to fight
Ella Tranter, 31, Stoke-on-Trent
Walking downstairs, it felt like I had balloons on my feet.
The constant sloshing feeling through my body was very uncomfortable, and my legs, hands and feet were horribly swollen. ‘Perfectly normal,’ my midwife reassured me.
After all, I was eight months pregnant with my first child.
Exhausted too, I was relieved to go into labour on 7 November 2022.
‘This is it,’ my husband Gav, then 31, grinned.
But the baby got stuck and after nearly 24 hours in labour, Edie arrived using forceps.
I lost a lot of blood and went into shock.
Thankfully Edie was healthy, and after two days, we were discharged.
‘It’s good to be home,’ I told Gav.
Yet I struggled, felt really lethargic.
I put it down to the traumatic birth and looking after a newborn.
But I became breathless when I slept on my back, and my legs and feet were still swollen.
A few days later I went for what is usually a five minute walk with my mum. It took ages.
I was breathless, dizzy, and had to keep stopping.
Then, that night, lying in bed, I suddenly felt as if I was suffocating.
‘I can’t breathe,’ I told Gav, panicking.
Every time I lay down I started choking.
Terrified, I rang the hospital, who urged me to come in because it sounded like a blood clot on my lungs.
True-life PATIENT CASEBOOK
Gav was amazing with Edie, but it broke my heart to leave them when my parents picked me up.
In Royal Stoke University Hospital, an X-ray showed fluid all over my chest. I had heart failure.
Doctors diagnosed me with peripartum cardiomyopathy, which is also known as postpartum cardiomyopathy.
A rare condition where the heart becomes enlarged and weakened in late pregnancy or in the five months after childbirth.
It was touch and go.
I pulled out my phone and te
