The Mom Who Nearly Died After Her C-section

Because no two paths to parenthood look the same, “How I Got This Baby” is a series that invites parents to share their stories.

When Bayo Curry-Winchell found out she was expecting in 2014, she knew that she and her baby would need to be carefully monitored throughout her pregnancy. At the time, Curry-Winchell was in her second year of medical residency at the University of Nevada, Reno, and living with lupus and antiphospholipid syndrome (a rare disorder that raises the risk of developing blood clots), both chronic autoimmune conditions. To manage the latter, Curry-Winchell took blood thinners. Her obstetrician warned her that she would need to cease taking them at least 72 hours before she delivered; otherwise she could be in danger of hemorrhaging. If Curry-Winchell went into labor naturally and something went wrong, necessitating an emergency C-section, she could also run the risk of developing a serious bleed — so her doctor thought it best to schedule an elective C-section instead.

The warnings were sobering given Curry-Winchell’s awareness that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than women of any other racial group in America. But she had also cared for many pregnant and postpartum patients and felt confident she knew how to optimize her own prenatal care. She planned to deliver at the hospital where she worked, among trusted colleagues she believed would protect her from harm. “I picked my doctor because I knew he had a history of being very approachable and kind,” Curry-Winchell says. “He seemed to look at me as a whole person. He always asked me how my rotations were going and how my husband was doing. I felt like he saw all of me.” She didn’t fixate on the possibility that something would go wrong with her care, too, but somewhere deep in her brain, she says, anxiety was always there.

Curry-Winchell developed hyperemesis gravidarum, a condition that causes excessive vomiting in pregnancy, but had an otherwise uneventful walk-up to her delivery. She got off the blood thinners as planned, 72 hours before her scheduled C-section at 38 weeks. She and her husband, James, welcomed a baby girl named Jordan.

But as Curry-Winchell prepared to be discharged two days after the birth, she noticed that something was wrong with her incision. “I’ve attended a lot of deliveries and cared for a lot of postpartum patients, so I know what a healing incision should look like,” she says. “Mine was clearly unusually inflamed and swollen and extremely painful.”

A nurse recommended a warm compress and sent Curry-Winchell on her way. But by the time she and her husband arrived at Jordan’s pediatrician’s office for their daughter’s first checkup later that afternoon, she was doubled over in pain. She called her doctor’s office, and later that day went in to be checked out. During the exam, Curry-Winchell’s hunch was confirmed: She had a large hematoma. When her doctor pressed on her incision, “it burst,” she says. “The area completely opened up.” For the next three weeks, Curry-Winchell had to wear a wound vacuum to lower her risk of infection and help the incision heal properly. “There I was with a newborn, carrying around this wound vacuum,” she says.

The experience imprinted on her. “Going through all of that definitely heightened my awareness that things could go wrong,” Curry-Winchell says. “I knew that, of course — I’d seen it happen at work. But the knowledge hit differently when I went through it myself.”

Then, two years later, in 2016, she learned she was pregnant again. Her pregnancy went smoothly and she scheduled another C-section. At 38 weeks pregnant, she felt confident and ready for the big day.

Curry-Winchell recounts the shocking and life-threatening birth experience she never expected, and how she narrowly avoided becoming a harrowing statistic herself.

On preparing for her second delivery

As with my first pregnancy, I stopped my blood-thinning medication about 72 hours ahead of my scheduled C-section so I wouldn’t hemorrhage and so I could get an epidural. If you get an epidural while you’re on blood thinners, you can develop a spinal blood clot, which can lead to paralysis.

Everything seemed to be going to plan. The surgery itself seemed to go fine. We knew we were having another girl. I remember someone bringing her close to me, so I could see her beautiful little face. It was a moment of complete excitement and gratitude. It just made my heart happy to be a mom for a second time. They took her away for some tests while they closed my incision.

But almost as soon as I got into the recovery room, I knew something was off. By the time 30 minutes had gone by, I was having a hard time talking. I was also feeling extremely tired, far more fatigued and out of it than I’d felt after having my first C-section. I knew my body; I remembered how I’d felt after I had Jordan. This was different. I felt like I was slipping in and out of myself, like I was losing control.

On trying to express her alarm to her caregivers

I’m a pretty sunny person. Even when I’m on an overnight shift at 2 a.m., I’m known as the happy doctor. I wasn’t acting like myself, and my husband could also tell something was up. We called for a nurse. “Something doesn’t feel right,” I said. She checked my vitals, took a look at me, and assured me I was fine. “Everything is normal,” she said. “You look fine.” Then she left.

I tried to relax, but I couldn’t. My body felt weak, and in my brain, I was panicking. It felt like the world was spinning. I managed to hit the nurse call light again to get the nurse to come back. Again, she took my vitals, told me everything looked normal, and left.

But something was happening to me. “Call my doctor,” I told my husband, barely getting out the words. I’m lucky to have my doctor’s cell phone number — he shared it with me, physician to physician. Thankfully, he picked up right away. “Something is wrong with Bayo,” my husband said.

My memory becomes pretty hazy after that. I remember my doctor arriving and asking me questions, and my struggling to communicate with him. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he could tell I wasn’t the Bayo he knew. He knew my baseline, my temperament, so he knew right away I was sick.

Suddenly, I was being pushed back into the operating room. It felt like I was flickering in and out. I remember registering the face of my anesthesiologist — one of my colleagues, someone I knew.

“You’re going to be okay, Bayo,” he said, looking down at me. That’s the last thing I remember. Then everything went dark.

On learning that she’d almost died

When I woke up a day after the surgery, my husband, father, and sister-in-law were there. I started asking questions right away: “What happened? What’s going on?”

Everyone in the room was emotional. You could kind of feel the weight of it; I remember the look on my dad’s face, the worry in his eyes. “Babe, you almost died,” my husband said. It took me a minute to understand what he was saying.

My next words were, “Where’s Jaylin? Is Jaylin okay?” I realized she wasn’t in the room, and I panicked. Everyone assured me she was fine and being looked after in the nursery.

My husband started telling me the story. He said that I’d gone back into the operating room for about an hour so my doctor could open me back up and figure out what was going on. When my doctor came to visit me later, he told me more. I’d “retained products,” he said — medical-speak for retaining a piece of my placenta. It’s likely that the retained placenta caused internal bleeding, which is why I was so weak and woozy in recovery. I lost a significant amount of blood, he said. I’d had to be transfused during my second surgery multiple times.

It was a lot to take in. Retaining part of the placenta can happen, whether you’ve had a Cesarean or a vaginal delivery. It’s not 100 percent preventable; as physicians, we’re all human and we can all miss things. What’s important to me is that he saved my life. I was overcome with gratitude for him, for honoring me and listening to me.

I was in the hospital for the next week and a half. I have no recollection of Jaylin in her first days. My body had just delivered her, but it was in crisis, and my mind hadn’t caught up. I was so sick. I barely processed that I’d had another little girl.

Those first few days after delivery can be vital when it comes to connecting with your baby. But I don’t remember meeting my daughter until she was 3 days old. There are pictures of me holding her for the first time, but I don’t remember it at all. I felt disconnected from her, and disconnected from myself. We didn’t get the chance to create memories together, and even now, I feel robbed of that.

Compounding everything, during the first few days of Jaylin’s life, we found out she had a heart defect that would need to be monitored. Some women with lupus face an increased risk that their baby may be born with a congenital heart defect, so I wanted Jaylin to get an EKG. It was one of the first things I asked about after I woke up from my second surgery. Her EKG confirmed the defect. It was another major stressor.

On going home from the hospital

Once I got home, I struggled. I didn’t feel as strong as I had after my first C-section. I was mentally and physically depleted and felt pulled in so many different directions. My older daughter was only 2 and needed me, as did my baby — this new little person who I felt like I didn’t know.

I’d struggled to nurse my firstborn. But I was on a mission to nurse my second, partly because I felt so out of control of my body. I thought that if I could get my body to do this — for her and for us — I could reclaim a sense of being more in command.

It took a while, but we did nurse and it helped us bond.

On developing postpartum depression

My attitude in life has always been, “What’s next? What’s the plan?” I run fast. I have this resilience — this thing that’s ingrained in me to push forward. But I had a really hard time. I had postpartum depression with Jordan, but I had it worse after Jaylin was born.

I’ve always found it hard to connect with a therapist; there aren’t that many Black therapists — or even very many Black physicians — in Reno. I tend to gravitate toward care providers who are culturally sensitive, with whom I can identify and who can also identify with me. I also have this underlying anxiety that I think other physicians share. Sometimes you think, Could something I say in a session be held against me and jeopardize my ability to practice? It can be hard to trust.

But we got through it. I joined a support group on Facebook, and my two best friends helped me get my swing back. Over time, I came back into myself. But even today, I feel grief. If I hadn’t kept saying, “Something is off, something is off” — if my doctor hadn’t come to me right away — what would’ve happened? I get emotional when I think about the fact that when I said something was wrong, I still didn’t get help.

On returning to work and seeing the nurse who didn’t listen to her

After I went back to work, I had the opportunity to gather a group of my colleagues and share my thoughts. The nurse who took care of me in recovery was there. It crossed my mind, What would it be like to talk to her, one-on-one? But I didn’t want to place blame. I always try to lead from a place of curiosity, and I don’t think she treated me from a place of ill intent. Bias is something we all have, and it often carries through in our actions, whether we’re conscious of that or not. “We know Black and brown people are often dismissed in a medical setting,” I told my colleagues. “We have to be aware of that, be aware of our biases and know how to check them.”

I was glad the nurse came that day, and I hope she listened. Since then, every time I’ve given a talk about unconscious bias in medicine, I think about her and imagine someone like her in the audience. When a patient says they’re in pain, it’s not our place to say, “Well, you don’t look like you’re in pain” or “But you look normal.” I hear that all the time. But who are we to decide what someone’s pain level is? We have to believe our patients when they tell us they’re hurting.

On her lingering anxiety

Jaylin is a healthy, beautiful 8-year-old now. We monitored her heart defect for a few years, and it resolved on its own. It’s no longer a problem. I’m so grateful for her. I would give up my life for her, 100 percent. But thinking about her birth is still hard for me. Every birthday she has, I’m taken back to the thought of how close I came to dying. Life moves on, but the imprint of that event sticks around.

I still have anxiety when it comes to receiving medical care. Whenever I have to see a doctor when I’m out of state, for example, I feel this need to justify myself — why I’m there, what my ailment is. I feel like I could find myself needing to fight for my life at any moment.

My dad passed away about a year and half ago; he was an incredible guy, and he made me who I am. He had a saying: “The world will always be bigger than you, Bayo. Think of one small thing you can do every day to make a change.”

That’s how I approach life. I am putting this story out there on purpose, even though it’s difficult to talk about, with the hope that I can help one person have a different outcome.