By Shelby Masi 
After the traumatic birth of my daughter, I searched for others who had experienced vasa previa, but most of what I found were support groups for stillbirth. It’s easy to understand why; vasa previa is one of the most preventable causes of stillbirth, and yet most people, including most pregnant women, have never heard of it. My daughter is almost three years old, and I still carry a complicated guilt about that: why did we get to be the lucky ones?
I want to share my story—not to frighten you, but because awareness is the only thing that saves lives with this condition. If even one person reads this and advocates harder for a scan, it will have been worth it.
I had never heard of vasa previa before my pregnancy. At 20 weeks, I was diagnosed with velamentous cord insertion (VCI) and a bilobed placenta, two rare complications on their own. When I read about them, I kept coming across vasa previa as a potential complication of VCI, and I had a gut feeling, the kind you can’t quite shake, that it was going to be part of my story too.
My midwife reassured me that the odds were simply too low. She told me there was no way I was hitting triple cherries in rare pregnancy complications and not to let Google or my anxiety get the better of me.
I tried to listen to her. I really did.
I did my non-stress tests and routine ultrasounds all the way to 36 weeks. At a routine scan, the ultrasound tech went quiet. Her whole demeanor shifted. She told me she was sending me to the main hospital for better imaging because the cord looked close to the cervix.
Then they sent me home. For three days. With no restrictions.
In those three days, I deep-cleaned my car in the summer heat (thanks, nesting!), completely unaware that my umbilical cord was less than two centimeters from my cervix. (For reference, less than 5cm is the suggested threshold for a C-section.) I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions every single night since the beginning of my second trimester. I called about them and was brushed off every time, and told to just walk around and stay hydrated, so I did.
When I finally arrived at the main hospital three days later, they admitted me immediately. A C-section was scheduled for that day. I was hooked up to monitors when my contractions started right on schedule, and suddenly, doctors and nurses came rushing in.
“You’re having contractions—a lot of them.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, half laughing. “That happens every night.”
The doctor was not amused. “You’re going to the OR right now. If even one of those blood vessels ruptures, or your water breaks, even if we go straight to the OR, it would be a catastrophic loss.”
Zoinks, Scoob.
My husband had finally stepped away from my side for the first time all day to grab food—he hadn’t wanted to leave me—and the one moment he did, I was being wheeled to the OR. I was crying, but not about what you’d expect. I was hyper-fixating on one thing: his beard. It’s glorious and goes down to his chest, and at work in the clean room, they have to special-order beard nets. I kept saying, through tears, “He needs a beard net! You don’t understand, you won’t have the right size—!”
Trauma is funny like that. It makes you fixate on the strangest things.
My husband miraculously made it back in time, and the C-section itself was as eventful as C-sections go—numb, nauseated, blood pressure bottoming out in the 70s—but my daughter was delivered safely, the only part of my “birth plan” that actually went to plan. But when they removed the placenta, the room went quiet. Everyone spoke in hushed tones and took photographs. The blood vessels, they told me later, had been thick boys. A ticking time bomb.
The next morning, when the doctor came back to check on me, I told her about the weeks of dismissed contractions, the three-day wait after that scan, the way I had kept asking—begging, really—for follow-up imaging because I was afraid of exactly this. She was horrified.
“You should have been admitted at 32 weeks on bed rest,” she said, “and delivered by 34 weeks at the latest. The fact that you made it to 36 weeks is nothing short of a medical miracle.”
For the first two months of our daughter’s life, my husband and I would burst into tears without warning just looking at her. Thinking about how close we came. Processing the gap between what should have happened and what actually did. That particular grief—surviving something that kills other babies and devastates other families—is its own kind of complicated.
Seeing my sweet girl earthside, lying in my arms, I kept thinking, May the home of that ultrasound tech be forever blessed.
My daughter is almost three now, and I still get choked up telling this story. But I’m finding my voice, and I intend to use it.
Vasa previa affects an estimated 1 in 1,200 to 1 in 5,000 pregnancies. It is not detectable through standard prenatal care unless specifically scanned for. It is almost always survivable with early diagnosis and a planned C-section. And it is far too often missed in patients who, as I did, had risk factors that should have prompted closer monitoring.
If you are pregnant and have been diagnosed with VCI, a bilobed placenta, a low-lying placenta, conceived via IVF, or are carrying multiples, ask your provider specifically about vasa previa. Ask for a transvaginal ultrasound with color Doppler. Ask more than once if you have to. Trust your gut.
And if a provider dismisses your concerns, repeat after me: “I’d like it noted in my file that I requested [procedure] and am being denied.” Hell, find a new provider if you need to/are able to.
No one should scrub their car in the summer heat, three days away from a potential catastrophe, because the people entrusted with their care didn’t think it was worth a closer look.
Note: The information included here is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
by Krystal Kleidon 
by Her View From Home 
by Samantha Sutton 
