Medical Mystery: Giving birth didn’t ease a woman’s dangerous hypertension

By Sandra G. Boodman

Through the haze of exhaustion and elation that often characterizes the first disorienting weeks of motherhood, Karen Good felt something else: a gnawing fear for her own health.

Good, then 41, had given birth to a healthy baby boy shortly after Christmas 2007. Her son was delivered four weeks early because she had developed preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening condition characterized by high blood pressure and protein in the urine. In most cases the remedy is delivery; once the baby is born the mother’s blood pressure usually returns to normal.  More Read