At just 35 with a toddler and newborn, I was left on the brink of death by hidden condition that strikes stressed mums

IT was supposed to be a special time - Victoria Warnes had just given birth to her second child, and was enjoying that new-baby bliss.

But six weeks after her son arrived, the mum-of-two noticed something strange when she was out in the park with her family.

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With very little warning, Victoria suffered a type of heart attack, caused by a spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) - at the age of just 35.

She had a tear in a major artery going into the heart - which can lead to a heart attack or a cardiac arrest, the British Heart Foundation explains.

“I was walking the kids around the park in a double pushchair and when I picked up the pace, my chest was starting to ache slightly,” Victoria tells Sun Health.

“I'm a pretty fit person, so it didn't feel right for me.

"And then I noticed when I was going up and down the stairs that my chest was starting to ache even more.”

Victoria, now 42, went to her local NHS hospital but was told there was nothing wrong with her.

“My husband reminded me we have private healthcare and so I got an appointment to see somebody,” she adds.

“Luckily, there was a cancellation, so I was seen that day rather than two weeks later, as a fortnight later I would have been dead; it would have been a different scenario altogether.”

Most people who have SCAD do not have usual risk factors for heart disease such as high cholesterol, smoking or diabetes.

It can be misdiagnosed or there may be a delay in diagnosis - it is unclear how common it is.

But SCAD is responsible for approximately 25 per cent of heart attacks in women under the age of 50, according to the Victor Change Cardiac Research Institute, which is researching the condition in Australia.

Roughly 10 per cent of SCAD cases occur during or around pregnancy, sometimes called pregnancy-associated SCAD (P-SCAD).

It can strike during pregnancy, but the most risky period is one month after delivery, according to a review of 82 patients over 37 years, published in the journal Circulation.

The review reported 13 maternal deaths caused by SAD since 1984.

Victims don’t have typical risk factors but emotional stress has been pinpointed as one particular contributor, as well as female hormones.

Victoria says hers was a combination of pregnancy hormones and stress.

She had just given birth to her second son, Wills, who is now seven, when she suffered P-SCAD.

Victoria’s first birth caused her a huge amount of trauma when her little girl, Olivia, now 10, was breech.

Heart attack symptoms in women can be quite different to how they are in men and they do go unrecognised

Victoria

She tells Sun Health: “It wasn't actually worked out that she was breech until I had been in excruciating labour for a couple of days.

“I was in excruciating pain and was largely just ignored. It was an emergency situation.

“I realised that she was still in the breech position and she was delivered by emergency C-section and was resuscitated three times at birth.

“That was the start of my experience with traumatic births.

“I was very much told afterwards that I hadn't dealt with the pain of labour very well and Olivia's been left to deal with the lifelong consequences of a traumatic birth and oxygen deprivation.”

Three years later, Victoria planned for her second birth to be a C-section “after the horrors of my first birth”.

“To all intents and purposes it was a lot smoother and my son was delivered fairly straightforwardly,” she says.

“It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I started experiencing exertional chest pains.”

Concerned, Victoria visited her local NHS hospital but says they couldn't find anything wrong with her, despite the fact she was still experiencing the exertional chest pain.

So she saw a private doctor - which the mum credits as saving her life.

“I saw a cardiologist and they said, ‘This is really weird - you're fit, healthy and you're fine in yourself, but you've got this chest pain’,” says Victoria.

A CT scan revealed a tear in a major artery going into Victoria's heart, called scar SCAD.

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She was seen by Harefield Hospital in West London and had surgery to patch her artery up.

She says: "I was in hospital for a few days and the after effects have been chest pain and spasms, which mentally caused a lot of stress with the fear of having another heart attack - this lasted almost a year.

"I have early scans to check my heart."

Victoria says she feels she wasn’t diagnosed initially because she is a woman.

“Heart attack symptoms in women can be quite different to how they are in men and they do go unrecognised," she says.

“So when I went to my local NHS hospital, for example, they didn't attribute what I was going through as being something that could be a heart attack, especially, being 35 years old.

“There's definitely a gender gap there in terms of heart attack symptoms.”

The BHF says it is a myth that men and women have different heart attack symptoms. However, there is a gap in heart care.

"Misconceptions around symptoms may make women less likely to seek and receive treatment," it says, which "may also delay diagnosis, making poor outcomes more likely".

Victoria is working on a campaign called Delivering Better following her traumatic birth - you can sign the open letter to Wes Streeting by clicking on this website.

“I remember telling my midwife I was traumatised at the time, and I was simply told. ‘Well, you’re alive and your baby’s alive, so on you go’,” she says.

“We're preconditioned to not make a fuss.

“We're preconditioned to be told, ‘This is your role, you give birth and then you go and you crack on, no matter what the consequences are’.

“If you're alive and breathing, you take your baby home, you get on with it and you don't make a fuss.”

The mum says she has had a huge response from other women who have had similar experiences.

Victoria promised herself that if she got out of her operation alive and had a second chance, she would do something with purpose and meaning.

She founded The Modern Antenatal Revolution™ and ww.yourbabyclub.com which provides 'modern, zero bias, zero judgement' antenatal and postnatal classes to parents.

“I started that seven years ago and now we teach midwives and health visitors and people wanting career changes all over the UK and beyond to run and teach these classes in their local areas,” Victoria says.