Laura Adams smiles as her daughter Josie is brought over by Laura's mother, Mary Tull of Waterloo, before a homecoming party at Adams' Marshalltown home on Saturday, May 28, 2016. Adams had serious complications during and following Josie's birth. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

Mary Tull was on a plane the day her daughter Laura Adams was rushed into surgery for the first time.

She had flown to Detroit to pick up Laura’s grandmother, Theresa Ehlke, 90, who wanted to be there when her great-granddaughter was born. When Mary stepped off the plane, a text was waiting for her: Laura had a C-section, two weeks before her due date. Josephine Teresa Adams, whose middle name comes from her great-grandmother, was born healthy, even as the seriousness of her mother’s condition was revealing itself.

A gallstone had caused damage to her pancreas. What followed was a spiral of infections, close calls and surgeries.

“People think pregnancy is perfectly safe nowadays. But pregnancy still is life-threatening,” Laura’s husband, Darin, said in February.

Laura's story - Part 1: Mounting complications after the birth of her daughter

For the vast majority of cases, pregnancy in the United States is safe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that, of more than 3.9 million births per year, around 600 lead to the mother’s death.

However, more than 65,000 women in the United States have a potentially life-threatening maternal condition or complication every year, a number that has been rising steadily over the past 15 years. The reasons for the increase are not clear, but factors could include increases in maternal age, pre-pregnancy obesity, pre-existing chronic medical conditions and caesarean delivery.

People don’t get the other aspect of childbirth...You have to care about the mom, too."

The numbers of serious complications statistically may be low — less than 2 percent of births — but for the individuals facing them, they can be dire.

“I just feel like a lot of times people don’t get the other aspect of childbirth. It’s always just about the child, not the mom,” Laura said. “In America, we think pain and suffering is OK as long as the baby is fine, but I don’t think that’s true. You have to care about the mom, too.”

Twice, Laura was transferred from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to Covenant Medical Center’s Acute Inpatient Rehabilitation Center in Waterloo in hopes she was on the road to full recovery. Twice, she had to be sent back to Iowa City after relapses in her health.

“The medical team warned us early on to expect two steps forward, one step back, four steps forward, two steps back, but as long as there are more steps forward, progress is being made,” Mary wrote at one point to supporters in an online update on the family’s GoFundMe page, which seeks to help the Adamses’ offset mounting medical bills. They plan to donate any excess funds to the American Pancreatic Association.