Casey struggled with infertility for more than a decade before giving birth to her son, Nathan, in 2015. She survived pulmonary embolism and postpartum hemorrhage and shared her story as part of the hundreds of women who gathered for the March for Moms in Washington D.C., May 2018.
“Despite all the reading I was doing during my one and only pregnancy, I didn’t know that maternal mortality and morbidity are on the rise in the United States. Life threatening conditions weren’t on my radar at all, and because of that, I nearly missed two silent killers.” Casey says her near-misses followed denial and delay, both by her and by her healthcare providers. “It’s why we need to educate expecting families about the signs of perinatal complications and empower them to advocate for themselves when they feel something is wrong.” She also encourages people to donate blood because “new mothers are one of the largest groups of people in need of safe blood products.”
Casey said the March for Moms gave survivors like her a voice. “We can do better; we must do better,” she pleas. It was there that she visited the White Ribbon Alliance table to write her one request to improve quality maternal healthcare services. “Just writing “LISTEN TO ME!” didn’t feel like enough,” she says. So, she added the description of what happened to her.
