I had a heart attack while pregnant. Here's what I want other women to know

I had a heart attack while pregnant. Here's what I want other women to know

 a heart attack while pregnant. Here's what I want other women to know originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com

Brittany Little was 34 weeks pregnant with her third child last November, when she started having difficulty breathing.

The then-29-year-old social worker first attributed the difficulty to her pregnancy and thought maybe it was asthma kicking in.

Little, of Hickory, North Carolina, was planning to go to dinner with her husband and in-laws when her mother-in-law said Little should go to the emergency room first.

PHOTO: Brittany Little, 30, is pictured during her pregnancy with her daughter. (Brittany Little)

PHOTO: Brittany Little, 30, is pictured during her pregnancy with her daughter. (Brittany Little)

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Within 30 minutes of arriving at her local hospital's emergency room, Little, who had no prior heart condition, was diagnosed with a heart attack.

"My chest didn’t hurt. I wasn’t clinching or holding onto my chest. I didn’t pass out. I just could not catch my breath," Little told "Good Morning America." "I would have never thought that I was having a heart attack, never."

(MORE: Cardiac nurse didn't realize that she was having a heart attack. Here's what women should know.)

Little, also the mom of two young sons, suffered a spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or SCAD, a condition that occurs when a tear forms in a blood vessel in the heart.

SCAD has no known cause and usually strikes women who are otherwise healthy. It is also shown in studies to occur more often in women experiencing hormonal shifts, especially women who are postpartum and women who are "experiencing or close to a menstrual cycle," according to the American Heart Association (AHA).

Little, now 30, was quickly transferred to a nearby hospital where she had an emergency stent put in. During that procedure, Little suffered cardiac arrest and was shocked twice through paddles to regulate her heartbeat.

After nearly five hours at that hospital, Little was transferred again, this time to Wake Forest Baptist Health, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where specialized doctors could both treat her heart condition and deliver her baby girl.

(MORE: Woman who suffered 3 heart attacks at age 40 wants women to know this about heart disease)

"At the time all I could think was I did not want to die and that was something that was constant in my head," Little said. "I didn’t know what to think or how to process what was going on."

A team of doctors from three different specialties at Wake Forest Baptist Health spent the next few days keeping Little stable and figuring out how to both safely deliver her baby and keep her alive.

"It was a constant balance between making sure Brittany was stable and could carry her baby as long as possible and making sure that the baby was stable," said Dr. Michael A. Kutcher, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Health. "The baby was 34 weeks and we wanted to buy more time."

"The complicating factor was if we did anything to help the mother’s heart, like a blood thinner or a device to help her circulation, that would affect the baby, and if the mother went into labor, that would affect her heart," he said.

Kutcher and a team of cardiologists and OBGYNs saw that Little's heart was not improving so they decided to perform a cesarean section to prevent her from going into spontaneous labor. They performed the C-section on Little in the hospital's hybrid cardiac catheterization lab, where they could perform "advanced cardiac intervention" if needed, according to Kutcher.

The C-section went smoothly and Little's daughter, Nova, was born healthy, weighing 6 pounds, 9 ounces.