"I knew the week before my daughter was born that something was wrong," says Dawn Manogue, mother of two from West Hartford, Conn. "I tried to tell my OB/GYN, but she wrote it off as new mother anxiety. She wouldn't hear what I was trying to tell her. Looking back, I think I had other symptoms during my pregnancy, but since it was my first pregnancy, I wasn't sure what to expect." /p>

Seven days after the birth of her daughter, Manogue was diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy, a condition defined as cardiac failure in the last month of pregnancy, or within five months postpartum. Mothers diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy have no prior problems with heart disease, and no other cause for their heart failure can be found.

"I wasn't expected to survive," Manogue says. "But I did and I got a crash course in cardiology."

Manogue went on to adopt another child and spends her time caring for her children and volunteering for A Mother's Heart, an organization dedicated to providing information and support for women diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy and to raise public awareness about the condition.

Dr. Curtis Rimmerman, a staff cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, says that pregnancy results in a number of physiologic changes, including the heart.

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