A Utah woman died from a rare heart disease just nine days after giving birth to twins.
Morgan Hughes, 23, of Benjamin, had always wanted to become a mother and was overjoyed when she gave birth to a boy and a girl on Dec. 19, her family said. Hughes made a good recovery after giving birth and was discharged from hospital a few days later. Hughes’ father, Brian Hodson, said the twins were born about six weeks premature and were sent to the neonatal intensive care unit to gain strength.
Hughes and her husband Sam Hughes, also 23, named the twins Hudson and Georgia, and after visiting them in the NICU, they were eager to take them home.
But about a week after giving birth, Hughes started feeling unwell. Mr Hodson said he vomited and passed out and thought he was having a seizure. She returned to the hospital, and Hodson said doctors found fluid around her heart. They diagnosed her with postpartum cardiomyopathy, also called peripartum cardiomyopathy. This is a rare form of heart failure that occurs when the heart muscle weakens towards the end of pregnancy or by about five months after childbirth.
In some cases, peripartum cardiomyopathy, if diagnosed early enough, can be managed with medications to improve heart function and combat fluid retention. But the condition can be difficult to detect because symptoms of heart failure, such as shortness of breath and swelling in the legs, can mimic those of pregnancy, according to the American Heart Association.
Hodson said Hughes’ condition rapidly deteriorated and he was treated in intensive care. On December 28, she went into cardiac arrest and died.
“It was devastating. I certainly didn’t expect anything like this,” said Hodson, who lives in Cedar Hills, Utah, about 40 miles north of Benjamin.
Mr Hodson said Mrs Hughes couldn’t wait to start life as a family of four, adding that the birth of the twins had gone “very smoothly”.
“She always wanted to be a mother and loved her baby forever,” he said. “She was known as a baby whisperer from an early age.”
The cause of peripartum cardiomyopathy is not clear. Experts say there are several risk factors, including twin or other multiple pregnancy, maternal age over 35, and high blood pressure, including pre-eclampsia, a serious pregnancy complication characterized by elevated blood pressure. It states that. Ms Hodson said Ms Hughes was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia late in her pregnancy but was otherwise healthy.
Peripartum cardiomyopathy is estimated to occur in about 1 in 2,000 births, and is more common in black women, said Dr. Patrick S. Ramsey, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at UT Health San Antonio in Texas. There is a high possibility that the disease will develop.
“This disease has increased in frequency over the past few decades, but we don’t know exactly why,” said Hughes, who helped write the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ guidance on cardiovascular disease and pregnancy. said Dr. Ramsey, who was not involved in the. .
Ms Hodson described her daughter, who just graduated beauty school to become a hairdresser, as “the most caring, loving and funny person”.
Immediately after her death, staff at Utah Valley Hospital in Provo drove the Hughes twins from the NICU to her room to say their final goodbyes as stunned family members gathered, Hodson said. They placed the babies one by one in Hughes’ arms.
“It’s a good image to remember, but it was also a difficult image to think about,” he said. “It was really sweet, but shocking.”
The hospital declined to comment, citing patient privacy laws.
The twins are still in the NICU and are expected to be released at some point later this month. Hodson said Morgan’s husband, who declined to be interviewed, was a “rock star” who frequently came to the NICU to feed, bathe and bond with the babies while he grieved the loss of his wife. Ta. The two got married in 2023.
Hodson and Hughes’ mother, Christy Hodson, has visited the NICU many times with her grandchildren.
“I just sit there and hug them and just look at them,” Hodson said. “It’s the best place, but sometimes it’s the hardest place for me because I’m sitting there and Morgan should be holding the babies. Morgan should be feeding the babies.”
Hughes’ death is one of hundreds of maternal deaths that occur in the United States each year, many of which are preventable.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System, in 2022, the most recent data available, 817 women died from maternal causes in the United States. The World Health Organization defines maternal death as occurring during pregnancy or within 42 days after childbirth.
“The number 800 is unacceptable,” Ramsey said. “I think there’s a lot of work to do to improve that.”
Some progress has been made. The national maternal mortality rate in 2022 was 22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to 32.9 deaths in 2021, according to CDC data. (Some experts believe this rate was particularly high in 2021 due to the pandemic.) )
Hodson said she hopes the twins will grow up knowing how much their mother loved them.
“All she wanted in life was to be a mother,” he said. “She would have loved them more than anything.”
