Olympian Allyson Felix recalls the scariest day of her life. It was the day she gave birth.
Olympian Allyson Felix had an emergency C-section at 32 weeks pregnant.
Felix recalled how hard it was to see her birth plan go out the window.
The track star joined the CDC's campaign on pregnancy emergencies.
Olympian Allyson Felix made headlines when she broke Usain Bolt's gold-medal record just 10 months after giving birth via emergency C-section. Her gold-medal performance at the 2019 World Athletics Championships was impressive, but Felix later revealed that she felt pressured to return to the track as soon as possible because of her contract with her former sponsor, Nike.
Now, Felix is speaking up about just how traumatic the birth of her now 3-year-old daughter, Camryn, really was.
Speaking to Zoë Ruderman on People's "Me Becoming Mom" podcast, Felix said the two days before she became a mother were the scariest of her life.
Getting diagnosed with preeclampsia
Felix was 32 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with severe preeclampsia. What started out as a routine checkup soon became a medical emergency.
"I was training, I felt good, so it just wasn't on my radar at all," Felix said, calling the emergency not only the "scariest" two days of her life but also noting how disappointed she was.
"I had, in my mind, what I would consider a perfect scenario, which was a natural birth. I had picked out the birthing suite, I had done hypnobirthing," she said. "I was very committed to my birth experience looking that way."
But the preeclampsia diagnosis meant Felix's carefully laid birth plan was replaced with a trip to the hospital and lifesaving surgery. She actually had a photo shoot with ESPN scheduled for later that day to announce her pregnancy to the world. When her doctor first suggested she head to the hospital, Felix asked if she could head there after the photo shoot. Her doctor told her to go straight to the hospital.
"She was like, 'You're not understanding, you need to go right away, this is very serious.' That's kind of when everything hit me," Felix said.
At the hospital, Felix needed oxygen and glucose and couldn't get up from bed. Doctors told Felix and her husband that it was time to call her family and tell them the baby was coming — eight weeks early.
Her brother didn't know if Felix was going to pass away
"I think at that point I still didn't understand the seriousness of everything," she admitted. "Talking to my brother after the fact, he explained that he didn't know if he was coming to see his niece be born or if his sister was gonna pass away."
Thankfully, Felix wasn't thinking about the possibility that she could die, and was instead very focused on her daughter and what would happen to Camryn once she was out and into the NICU.
"They had to take Camryn right away. I barely got to see her face. There was this quick moment when they kind of put her on my shoulder," said Felix, who had imagined beautiful skin-to-skin moments after giving birth but instead saw her baby whisked away.
Complications with her own health kept Felix on a different floor of the hospital for the first day of her daughter's life, an experience she said was awful, but when she was finally able to hold her daughter the next day, she called the moment "incredible."
The track star wants other mothers to know that no matter how healthy they feel, preeclampsia and other pregnancy complications can happen. Birth plans change, and at the end of the day, the most important thing is having a healthy baby, even if you have to divert from your birth plan.
Felix is passionate about educating birthing parents about pregnancy emergencies and joined the CDC's campaign to raise awareness about racial disparities in prenatal care.
Read the original article on Insider
