A health scare can be even more frustrating when doctors insist your symptoms are normal. That's what a St. Albans woman experienced after the birth of her second child.

Katey Yoast found out that not only are there more women like her, but she had the leading cause of death for postpartum mothers.

“I tried to carry my baby up a flight of stairs to get her to the crib and I couldn’t do it,” Yoast, mother of two, said.

Shortness of breath, feet swelling and high blood pressure can all be normal things that women experience after giving birth, but Yoast said she knew what she was feeling was not normal.

“I couldn’t breathe. I was holding on to the side of the rail," Yoast said. "I had to stop every couple of steps to breathe to get her up to the crib, and she only weighed six pounds at that point.”

Yoast ended up going to the emergency room. The doctors gave her a blood test and discovered she was in active heart failure. After the initial emergency was over, she went to the Cleveland Clinic and started seeing Dr. Eileen Hsich.

“It is one of the worst feelings to go to the emergency room, ask for help, and actually have no one [know what's wrong]...even physicians are not thinking about that," Hsich said. "They say, young people, odds are most pregnancies are normal, so, one of the normal things is not to be heard.”

Hsich has been studying peripartum cardiomyopathy with a group of doctors across the country. She said the most important things for pregnant women to know are to be persistent when they think something is wrong and that the majority of people with peripartum cardiomyopathy recover.

"You’re very afraid and you need to know you’re not the only one out there,” Hsich said.

Those who don't recover often have a weak or enlarged heart. A new study is recruiting 200 of those women for medication treatment to see if their condition can improve on a different medication.

That study is slated to start in July, underlining the importance of finding a doctor who specializes in the disease after diagnosis.

Yoast's daughter, Cheyenne, was two when Yoast went to the hospital.

"She was in the hospital with me when I was in the cardiology department, and she'd take her play stethoscope and check on my heart and say 'Mommy ok?'" Yoast said.

Those who experience heart failure often have to take medications for life to keep their heart strong. Yoast is no exception, but she said she's happy she is still able to take care of her kids.

“We need to do better to take care of our moms so that they're around to take care of their kids,” she said.