Paralysed By Pregnancy...But I Wouldn't Change A Thing

A Year on From a Terrifying Ordeal, Sam Is Learning to Cope With Parenthood in a Wheelchair

- Emma Levett

After becoming a new mum, the first year of having a bub is a huge, life-changing adjustment for most women.

But for Samantha Bulmer, who was paralysed hours before she gave birth, these 12 months have been the hardest of her life.

‘Every time people hear my story they can’t believe it,’ 34-year-old Sam tells New Idea.

‘To find out you’ll be in a wheelchair for life and have a baby the same week is pretty hard to get your head around.’

In June 2017 an abnormal cluster of blood vessels in Samantha’s spine, known as an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), ruptured when she was 37 weeks pregnant.

‘I thought I was dying,’ Sam told New Idea at the time. ‘The pain was intense and I was terrified for myself and my baby.

‘None of the doctors knew what was happening to me. I’d been brought in able to walk and now I couldn’t.’

Sam spent a terrifying night in hospital and it was only the next day, when she had an MRI scan, that specialists could see what was happening.