Hi {{ Name | there }},
I want to share a story from my life that every woman should know. I’m crying as I write this.
In November 2024, I delivered my baby within an hour of my water breaking. My husband didn’t stop for traffic lights on the drive to the hospital.
We got discharged the next day. It was Thanksgiving, and we were excited to go home as a newly expanded family.
During Thanksgiving dinner, I didn’t feel good. I brushed it off as ‘postpartum recovery’. I had given birth 32 hours ago with no pain meds.
That night I had a low fever, and the next morning diarrhea. Nothing alarming.
But my gut told me something is off. So I went to the ER, thinking I’d be home in a couple of hours.
The nurse’s words felt like ice:
”You have sepsis; we need to accelerate everything.”
My organs were shutting down. A leading cause of death for women. I had contracted a bacterial infection during natural delivery.
I spent the next five days in the hospital, hooked up to 5 IV antibiotics 24/7 as they tried to diagnose and eliminate my infection.
I kept saying,
“I have a 2-day-old & a 2-year-old, I need to live! I need to go home.”
The doctors keep telling me I got ‘lucky’. It would have been fatal if I had come to the hospital a few hours later.
I still can’t believe my children came so close to not having a mom.
I never thought this could happen to me. I’m healthy and have access to great healthcare.
It’s important for us to realize the dangers surrounding maternal health.
In the U.S. alone, 669 women died from pregnancy‑related causes in a year.
Why is this still happening?
Because women’s bodies are an afterthought.
80 % of pre‑clinical animal studies still use only male subjects.
Between 2019 and 2023, there were twice as many all-male clinical trials compared to all-female ones.
If our drugs are designed on male rats and our trials skip real women, no wonder doctors miss the signs when we are crashing.
I’m sharing my story for every new mom who’s told, “Pain is normal.”
No. Normal shouldn’t mean deadly.
You don’t have to power through pain. Can we please stop telling women to silently endure?
If something feels off, get loud, get checked. Advocate for yourself.
If you have friends & family who are pregnant (or planning to be), please share this with them to protect them.
We need to educate the women in our lives.
And we need to pressure society to do more to protect us and our babies.
Please join me in breaking the silence around maternal health.
Reply to this email with your story, your questions, or just your thoughts. Every voice matters, and together, we can make childbirth safer for all women. I read every reply.
See you next Thursday.
Shivani 💛
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