Lindsay Herriott, 40, had an easy pregnancy, giving birth in September 2022 to her baby, Davis, who weighed a considerable 10lbs.

The labor and delivery went smoothly and she was discharged quickly. But within about a day of returning home, she noticed that when she lay down, her heart began to race. Her chest felt like there was a heavy weight rested on it, and she developed a bad cough.

Meanwhile, her legs swelled, and she felt especially fatigued. But her obstetrician insisted she was experiencing standard first-time-mother anxiety. A quick Google search confirmed that anxiety among new mothers is common.

Still, the label didn’t feel right. But she let it go for a couple of days. 

Then, the heaviness in her chest transformed into a severe cough that staff in her doctor’s office chalked up to Covid. But her symptoms only worsened, until one night, while feeding her baby, she began coughing up phlegm. 

Only, a trip to the bathroom later confirmed that she was coughing up blood, the result of a leaky mitral valve in her heart that she did not know about. 

She rushed to urgent care, where she learned her blood pressure was ‘200 over something’. A normal, healthy blood pressure is less than 120/80 millimeters of mercury (mmHg).

Declining to take an expensive ambulance, she drove herself to the hospital where she was diagnosed with preeclampsia – sustained high blood pressure either during pregnancy or postpartum, often including high levels of protein in urine that indicates damage to the kidneys.

Lindsay Herriott, 40, developed severe postpartum symptoms after delivering her baby in 2022. Doctors dismissing it as anxiety, until she later coughed up blood and was hospitalized with preeclampsia. The condition stemmed from an undiagnosed leaky heart valve (stock)

Her high blood pressure, coupled with increased fluid volume, worsened her leaky mitral valve, forcing fluid back into her lungs, causing dangerous symptoms. 

Dr Priya Freaney, director of the Northwestern Postpartum Hypertension Program within the Women’s Heart Care Program, told Today: ‘[A leaky mitral valve is] often asymptomatic for many years or decades for people and only comes to light when the system is provoked in a way.’

Herriott, of Chicago, recovered from her bout of high blood pressure with medications specifically designed for the condition. 

Treating preeclampsia also requires continuous blood pressure monitoring, and doctors are still keeping an eye on her mitral valve, which may require surgery to repair in the future. 

When she got pregnant a second time in 2024, she was constantly on the lookout for symptoms. 

They appeared one night in October that year, soon after her son Oakley’s birth.

Her heart began to race as if in a panic when she went to lie down. She believed it to be a sign of PTSD, but she and her husband went to the hospital to be safe. 

Doctors at the hospital informed her that she developed a pulmonary embolism – a blood clot that had traveled to her lung.

Swedish study of 2M pregnancies found preterm births increase hypertension risk, especially with extreme prematurity (22-27 weeks). Risk peaks within 10 years but persists for decades, elevating long-term heart disease danger 

‘I immediately started crying because that’s what you see in movies where people just drop dead,’ she said. 

The clot can be deadly, killing around 10 to 30 percent of patients within a month. If caught early, though, the death rate drops to about eight percent.

Following prompt hospital treatment, Herriott’s recovery required her to self-inject blood-thinning medication for the duration of her breastfeeding.

Preeclampsia is more common among women who are past 20 weeks of pregnancy. Postpartum preeclampsia occurs in fewer than one percent of all pregnancies.

‘A lot of people believe that preeclampsia is a pregnancy problem, and when the pregnancy is over, the preeclampsia is over,’ said Dr Freaney. 

Experts are still working out the exact cause, which means so far, there are no targeted treatments.

Still, they are following several leads, including chemicals that affect blood vessel health, harmful antibodies that squeeze blood vessels, stress on blood vessel walls, weak mitochondria, chronic high blood pressure, and genes that react to low oxygen levels.

Preeclampsia can have a lifelong impact. Research shows that it raises a woman’s future risk of cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and strokes.  

Warning signs of pre-eclampsia include high blood pressure, protein in urine, severe headaches, vision problems, pain below the ribs and vomiting

In addition to higher heart attack and stroke risks, around two out of three women with preeclampsia will die of heart disease.

A 2019 study in Utah looked at how pregnancy-related high blood pressure disorders affected women’s long-term health. They analyzed birth and death records from 1939 to 2012, categorizing mothers by the number of pregnancies they had.

Women who had two or more pregnancies during which they had preeclampsia were twice as likely to die early from any cause, four times more likely to die due to complications of diabetes, three times as likely to die of heart disease, and five times as likely to die of stroke.

And women with two or more affected pregnancies lived about seven years fewer on average than those with no complications.

Each year, it causes over 70,000 deaths worldwide.

Herriott will work with a cardiologist for the rest of her life to monitor her mitral valve and preeclampsia symptoms.

Looking back, she said, she’s glad she didn’t immediately accept her obstetrician’s nonchalance.

She said: ‘I was proud of myself for trusting my own gut and (recognizing) that, even in the throes of all the hormones, you do know your body.’