Cindy Lange-Kubick: Stewart, Heart Walk team aim to help mothers

DeAnna Stewart crept downstairs to the couch so she wouldn’t wake the baby.

She had given birth two weeks earlier and she was used to being up at 3 a.m.

But William Michael was sleeping now, his bassinet next to her bed, close enough for her to reach over and feel the reassuring rise and fall of his chest, feel his heart beating.

Now she was feeling her heart.

She couldn’t catch her breath. Her arms ached. Her upper body was being crushed, the weight like an elephant on her chest.

She turned to her husband, Michael.

Is this a heart attack? Am I having a heart attack?

In minutes, an ambulance arrived. And by morning, the 35-year-old had an answer.

Peripartum cardiomyopathy, a heart disease brought on by pregnancy with symptoms that mimic pregnancy itself — fatigue, shortness of breath, swelling.

She was lucky, DeAnna says four months later, William tucked in the crook of her arm, fresh from his morning nap.

The disease is rare but it can be fatal, or it can weaken the heart so much the mother requires a transplant.

Her case was mild. A cardiologist put her on two kinds of medication and by next May she’ll know if she can quit taking it.

“It’s pretty darn scary that you don’t know what your body is doing.”

DeAnna and Michael Stewart had a plan when they got married. Get settled as a couple. Wait a few years and have baby No. 1, followed by baby No. 2 to complete the family.

It worked out pretty much that way, except DeAnna was convinced 4-year-old Olivia was going to be a boy, and she wasn’t.

By the time she became a mom she had years of experience with kids — working for 13 years in daycare and a stint as a nanny — and she had ideas about what worked and what didn’t when it came to raising children.

She loved the kids she looked after.

Then she became a mom.

“Half your heart is your own and half your heart is your kid’s.

And that was the hardest part, leaving in the ambulance that night, not knowing if she’d be coming back.

So when she did, and she heard about the American Heart Association’s heart walk, she signed up.

Michael signed up, too, and her father-in-law and her sister. She wrote a letter and passed it out to neighbors and friends.

At last count, her team was up to 11 walkers, not including babies and toddlers in strollers.

Women need to know about this, she says.

“I’d never heard of it. I thought, ‘I exercise, I eat right, how could I get this?’”

She never sensed anything out of the ordinary during her pregnancy.

Yes, she was tired. But weren’t all pregnant women tired?

She had some swelling, some shortness of breath, trouble sleeping. But wasn’t that normal, too?

When she was pregnant with Olivia, her blood pressure had shot up near the end, but this time there was no such spike.

So she never mentioned anything to her obstetrician.

Now she’s done her research. She wants all the money she raises to go straight toward peripartum cardiomyopathy research.

She has a letter she’s going to distribute to doctor’s offices that lists the early symptoms.

After her diagnosis the doctor told her she shouldn’t have more children.

That was OK, because baby William had completed the Stewart family.

But her heart hurts for moms who get that news after their first child.

The day she signed up for the heart walk, she filled out the form online.

There was a blank space for team name.

She thought for a minute.

She was still scared about what she’d gone through, but she was so happy to be alive, to be here for her kids.

She started to type.

Mommy’s Heartbeats.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7219 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.