"Definitely not the labor I would have chosen for my first baby," the influencer shared in a TikTok video on Wednesday, July 1
Credit: tiktok (2)
NEED TO KNOW
- Madeleine White has opened up about her experience with preeclampsia and a placental abruption during her first pregnancy
- The influencer, 30, shared her “traumatic” experience in a TikTok video on Wednesday, July 1
- Madeleine and her husband Andrew’s daughter, Juliette, was born early on June 1 and spent over three weeks in the NICU before going home
Influencer Madeleine White shared her "traumatic" birth story in a new TikTok video on Wednesday, July 1.
Madeleine, 30, explained that she was diagnosed with gestational hypertension while she was pregnant, and experienced a placental abruption and preeclampsia in labor. She began the video while sipping from a mug and speaking candidly to the camera, adding a trigger warning for anyone with "traumatic birth stories."
After sharing a previous video in which she struggled to remove her jewelry due to swelling when she was 31 weeks pregnant, fans in her comment section were quick to suggest she check with her doctor about preeclampsia.
"I still wasn't really buying it, so I took my blood pressure and it was like pretty high," Madeleine — who welcomed her first baby, daughter Juliette July, with her husband Andrew Fedyk, on June 1 — said in the video. She then contacted her obstetrician, who told her to get tested.
@madeleine_white
She made a dramatic entrance just like her mommy! 💅🎀🤍
♬ original sound – Madeleine White Fedyk
After spending three hours at the hospital and getting her blood pressure repeatedly tested, Madeleine said the doctor "effectively called me a hypochondriac" and sent her home.
"Which I was frankly, quite f—— humiliated by," she said with a laugh. "So off I went, and I said to Andrew, ‘I'm not going back there until I'm back in labor. I could be on my deathbed I'm not going back that was so embarrassing.' "
"How's that for foreshadowing?" she quipped.
The following week she was diagnosed with gestational hypertension.
"And they took another preeclampsia test, this was on Thursday afternoon," she recalled. "But yeah, I didn't hear back from the OB so I just assumed that my preeclampsia test was negative."
Preeclampsia is a common pregnancy complication that can result in high blood pressure and organ damage, among other symptoms, per the Mayo Clinic, which states, "With preeclampsia, you might have high blood pressure, high levels of protein in urine that indicate kidney damage (proteinuria), or other signs of organ damage."
A placental abruption "occurs when the placenta partly or completely separates from the inner wall of the uterus before delivery," according to the clinic.
Credit: tiktok
She then described waking up the morning after a wedding she attended with her husband Andrew feeling "really terrible."
"I felt like I had a hangover," Madeleine continued. "I had a headache, I was really low energy, but I also can just feel that way if I've overdone it the day before, didn't drink enough water, I was out in the heat at this wedding."
She and her husband proceeded to watch the Euphoria finale and go to sleep early, she said.
"I went to sleep at 10, and then at 11:30 I woke up and I was like ‘Oh something's not right,' " the influencer and model recalled. "I felt like, you know when you get your period the first day you get your period win the middle of the night and it's like a heavy flow and it wakes you up?"
She then realized she was bleeding, and "freaked the f— out."
"And then we drove to the closest hospital, which is not the hospital I was supposed to deliver at, and it's not where my OB works," she explained. "I actually swear one of the worst parts about this whole labor experience was standing in the lobby when they're asking me for my ID and insurance information as blood was just running down my legs."
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At first, doctors told Madeleine that the baby could potentially wait a few days since she would be born early should they induce her into labor.
"They tested to see if there was amniotic fluid in my blood, which there was," Madeleine explained. "But she straight up told me 'I don't really know what the best course of action is here because you are so early, we might be able to keep the baby in a couple of days, and give you the steroid shots to develop Juliette's lungs.' "
Assuming she had at least a day or two, Madeleine was shocked to learn she was having contractions that she could not feel.
"Oh and also, I had no pain — I didn't feel like I was in labor I wasn't having, to my knowledge, contractions," she shared. "The nurses kept coming in and looking at the monitors and being like ‘Are you sure you don't feel anything?' And I'd be like ‘No, why?' And they'd be like ‘You're having contractions, and they're like two minutes apart. And they're pretty big on the screen. Like are you sure you don't feel anything?' "
In the early morning hours, when Madeleine's OB returned to the hospital, he determined that the last preeclampsia test she had taken was positive.
"And then just as the doctor went to look at how much I was bleeding, I felt this really big gush," she added, with text flashing on the screen that read "I had her within 20 minutes."
"And they said 'No babe, you're having this baby right now,' " she said with a laugh. "The time that they prepped me for my C-section was the scariest time of my whole life."
She thanked a nurse who comforted her during the experience, calling her "the nicest lady I have ever met in my whole life."
"And all I kept saying was '[Mom] did this, your friends have all done this, loads of people you know have done this, you can do this,' " Madeleine said. "Don't freak out, the baby needs you."
Her doctor also determined that she had experienced a placental abruption while performing her C-section. Madeleine was discharged from the hospital nearly three days after giving birth, and her baby, Juliette, was admitted to the NICU, where she spent three weeks and one day before going home.
"Definitely not the labor I would have chosen for my first baby, and it definitely makes future pregnancies a little bit more complicated," she concluded in the video. "Still my favorite story to tell because it's how my favorite little girl got here. See you tomorrow."
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