If You’ve Ever Been Told ‘You’re Fine,’ Read This
Actually, maybe you’re not. And you’re not alone.
Trust your gut, Mama.
Courtesy Jaime Zeluck-Hindlin
“Oh, it’s just baby things. You’re fine.”
I wasn’t fine. I was six months into a difficult pregnancy and I was extremely sick. I will never forget those words from my doctor.
It was my second pregnancy when I was told: “You’re fine.” I had initially gotten pregnant at 36-years-old. Six months into the pregnancy, I miscarried. It was extremely traumatizing and set off a chain reaction of damage and suffering. I was numb to the trauma. After the miscarriage, I threw myself back into work in an attempt to anesthetize myself from what I’d just experienced. I was thriving in a very high-pressure job, but I found out I couldn’t get pregnant if I wanted a healthy baby.
I had to do a year-and-a-half of IVF in order to conceive. Doing this in addition to my high-stress work was extremely taxing on my body. Nevertheless, I was pregnant after the second round of IVF at 32. Six months into this second pregnancy, I met with my doctor and told her: “I don’t feel well. My ankles are swollen. My body is swollen. I’m having trouble breathing.”
She replied, “Oh, it’s just baby things. You’re fine.” But I knew something wasn’t right.
A few weeks before my due date, I got so sick that I couldn’t function. I went to see my doctor again and was almost screaming, “Something is not right.” They were going to send me home after some testing, and I said, “I’m not going home. I need this baby out of me!” I was induced three weeks early. Fifteen hours after I gave birth to Kate, we were both admitted to the ICU. Kate was in the ICU for 10 days and was released before I was.
I was correct. I wasn’t fine. I had been in heart failure. It’s clinically known as peripartum cardiomyopathy—your heart overflows with all of the fluid you retain in pregnancy, which results in it pumping much harder to keep you alive. Heart failure weakens your heart and entire body. With the diagnosis, I was told, “We’ve got to take it day by day. We don’t know if you’ll ever be the same again.”
Work was now on the backburner. A planned three-month maternity leave turned into an eight-month maternity leave with cardiac rehab and lots of medication. After spending years working so hard to excel in my career, I realized I wasn’t even able to take care of my own daughter.
My doctor cleared me eight months after Kate was born. My heart was finally normal and I was able to go back to work. This time I decided to go back to work for someone else: myself.
I ended up starting my own company. This way, I could make the rules and call my own shots. I’m a recovering addict, so I needed to find another addiction—which was work. I founded Nonstop Management in September 2017, not long after Kate’s birth in January 2017.
It probably was too soon to start a company. With 10 songwriter and music producer clients, I pushed myself away from my daughter. I couldn’t take care of myself because of the trauma. For the first four-and-a-half years of her life, I was working like a madwoman to build this company. To be honest, I should’ve focused on her, but it was the only way I knew how to cope. I birthed a company that went on to have some great success.
“Oh, it’s just baby things. You’re fine.”
Once again, I wasn’t fine. The pandemic forced me to come to a halting stop, just like everyone else. I realized I’d run from a lot of the trauma—from my miscarriage to Kate to being told I could never have a child again. I decided to stop running and started learning how to balance my life a little bit more. Work was my therapy, but that’s not therapy. I needed serious therapy.
Kate turns 5 in January. I finally have an incredible staff who can run things. I’m focused on being present for my daughter and being the best mom, wife and business owner I can be. Moving to Miami has been a blessing in disguise, because it’s the first time in five years I’m able to have quality time alone with my daughter. My clients aren’t even awake until noon here—I’m in the music industry, after all!—so I have my mornings with Kate. I remain in major trauma therapy.
After I experienced heart failure, I was on a mission. I didn’t know how, but I was determined to spread awareness of what I’d gone through, because it really isn’t written or talked about anywhere due to its rarity. I started a dialogue with the American Heart Association, launching a network on their site for maternal health. If you’re having issues, you can go there, talk about it and receive some really valuable advice—it’s the advice I wished I’d gotten. When I was diagnosed, the only articles I could find were from 2011, and nothing made me feel better about my condition. This network is one of my proudest accomplishments.
Today, I continue in this fight. I’ll do anything I can to spread awareness. If you’re a working mom and you’re dealing with trauma, you’re not alone. Most women don’t pay attention to their bodies, and it isn’t our fault. We trust our doctors blindly. We tell our doctors what’s going on, and are told “you’re fine,” but we aren’t.
I know now like I always knew that these aren’t “just baby things,.” You will be fine if you trust your body and yourself and you speak up when you feel like you’re not. Know that you aren’t alone in this fight, Mama.
