This week has been... eventful.
I've spent quite a lot of this week in hospital.
I had a doctor's appointment on Friday where my blood pressure was higher than they would have liked, I was advised that if I got a selection of symptoms (headaches, abdominal pain...) I should call up the emergency out of hours service. On Sunday I woke up with stabbing/needle pains below my right ribs and did just that, I was seen very quickly when I got there, my bp was higher than it had been on Friday, but it still only needed monitoring as there were no signs that I was developing pre-eclampsia.
On Monday morning I booked an appointment with my GP to have it tested again that afternoon. I did my best to make sure that it would be good for them, setting off with plenty of time to get there so that I could have a nice long-ish sit down before the actually appointment. Unfortunately, it didn't work. My first reading was 180/117. There's a little table near the start of this Wiki entry that says that's a very bad blood pressure to have. My second reading at the doctor's (taken an hour later) was in the high 170's for systolic and over 100 diastolic.
I was referred to the day assessment unit on the maternity ward. Owen drove me there, when I arrived they said they had expected me to arrive in an ambulance.
They assessed me, one doctor wanted to induce me (as the only cure to gestational high blood pressure is delivery of the baby), I let him know that I'd been advised not be induced by an anesthetist, they got the on call anesthetist in and the plan changed to give me blood pressure medication and if there is no improvement send me for an emergency c-section.
As an aside, it bothers me that every anesthetist I've met this week already knows me by reputation. I've been having a lot of comments along the lines of "I've already heard of your situation" and it bothers me that I'm considered such an exception and problematic case that I have a reputation. I mean given that I didn't even see an anesthetist until I was 34 weeks pregnant (which, incidentally, is the same day that my blood pressure started to show signs of being high - and yes, I do think the two things are related), when I'd had a perfectly healthy pregnancy up to then and it was far too late for me to do anything about my situation, was there really a need to make me feel like shit for being fat? After all, I had been trying to lose weight before I got pregnant and quite frankly I hadn't expected it to happen so quickly! Anyway, this paragraph is stressing me out, so I'll move back to the details of what happened.
I was moved into a delivery suite, where I was attended to by absolutely lovely midwives and student midwives. I was put on monitors to see if the baby was in distress (she wasn't), my blood pressure was checked every 15 minutes and the monitors showed that I was having "tightenings" of the tummy / very mild contractions. My blood pressure went down gradually and once my blood results came back as normal I was moved to Iffley ward for more casual monitoring.
Owen wasn't allowed to stay with me on Iffley ward, so he went home around 12:30. I had a little bit of a cry, it had been a very long and tiring day, and hospital wards are pretty lonely places. They checked my blood pressure at 1:30 ish and I managed to get a little bit of sleep until around 3:30 when I woke up and was thinking too much to sleep again. I checked the timing of my medication with the midwife, the doctor had put it down as 8am - 2pm - 8pm, but a midwife had suggested that it should be taken every 8 hours i.e. 8pm - 4am - 12pm. The midwife reassured me that I'd get meds at 6am, so there wouldn't be a huge 12 hour gap in between tablets. I tried to sleep, but kept waking up, either due to hospital noises, when I got my meds and bp tested at 6am or a few times with my own pre-sleep-snoring.
I stayed in bed until 8 ish. The arrival daylight made me feel a bit better and talking to a couple of ladies in the dining room for breakfast also helped move my head away from everything that was happening to me. One of the things about Iffley ward is that it's for women that have complications before or after the birth, so everyone has their own horror story about what's happening to them. This sounds like a horrible thing to have to listen to, but it put my incident into perspective for me, my bp was dropping with almost every check up, my blood results had been fine, in comparison I was one of the healthy ones on the ward.
The doctor came to see me somewhere between between 9 and half past. He said that he'd like me to be kept in for 24 hours to see if the medicine was working, so I knew the earliest I would get out would be Wednesday. I was strapped up to the fetal heart rate monitor again and Owen arrived to keep me company. I was getting lots of lovely supportive messages on Facebook and a few offers of visits - I just wasn't sure if I would be awake enough to handle visitors very well. Anyway, the day passed reasonably easily, my bp stayed at reasonable levels, my Dad came to visit and towards the end of the day I was feeling up to Hannah and Sam visiting too.
I cried again when Hannah and Owen left. My roomie had been discharged earlier in the day so I was completely alone for a little while. It seemed like the night would last forever. Also, I was very, very tired! The same midwife team was on again that night and they were really sweet - I can't praise the midwives in Reading enough, they are all very kind, professional and treat me really well; every midwife and student midwife (well, except the midwife in charge of me at hospital on Tuesday during the day, but I'm choosing to ignore her) I've met, whether a community midwife or a ward midwife at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, has been amazing. Because they knew how little sleep I'd got the night before they waited until I woke up at 5:40 to take my bp and they gave me my meds then too. I then got right back to sleep until the morning and woke up feeling pretty chirpy.
Wednesday was slow going, I was no longer in any risk so I wasn't a high priority, meaning I didn't get seen until fairly late in the morning. I was okay with that, because I knew it meant that they weren't worried about me, it just really dragged, especially as I'd told Owen to go to work now that I wasn't in danger and everyone else isn't allowed to visit until after 3! The doctor that day said that if everything checked out okay I could go home. The bit that got to me the most was that I was feeling really sticky and I wanted a shower, I'd asked if I could get one in the morning around 9:30, but the midwife (thankfully a different one to Tuesday day-time) wanted me to have all my tests first, however, because I was low priority I didn't get my shower until after 3pm!
Two new ladies joined me in my room, both of them had been induced, or rather had just been given the medication to be induced and were waiting for it to start working. My Dad came to see me again, we watched the football and played Blokus (2-player), which Dad won, I hadn't been thinking strategically, but have a good idea about how to win next time. At half time we went to see if my results had come back and to go for a walk, they had and just needed to be looked at by a doctor. We went for a coffee and when we got back I was told that I would be allowed to go home. I got discharged and Dad took me home. I'm really lucky to have him and Julie so close at hand, they've both been so good and I feel a lot safer having one of our three sets of parents being less than 20 minutes away.
It was really good to be home. Getting to cuddle Owen properly, watching Biggles try to hump White like a crazy thing and sleeping in my own bed - bliss!
We had another appointment at the hospital on Thursday, this one was to go over the details of my planned c-section. Thankfully we met the first anesthetist that said she didn't think I would be as much of a problem as everyone else had led me to believe (we've already met a few doctor's that are in favour of me having a natural birth too). She'll be looking after me on Thursday, so I'm really happy about that as she seems confident in her abilities and is also rather nice. It also made me happier about what will happen if I do go into labour before then... I'm seriously considering eating spicy curries, going for walks in the countryside, eating pineapple and drinking raspberry leaf tea to try and move it along now ;-)
Unfortunately Biggles has come down with a chest infection, which Owen noticed on Thursday, so Owen took him to the vet's last night. He seems to be improving a bit now. We also went out on our last date before baby arrives and had a rather nice meal at The Swan in Pangbourne.
TL:DR - I've been in hospital because I had dangerously high blood pressure on Monday, they've given me medication that is leveling it out, the plan is still to go for a c-section on the 25th unless I go into labour before then.
I had a doctor's appointment on Friday where my blood pressure was higher than they would have liked, I was advised that if I got a selection of symptoms (headaches, abdominal pain...) I should call up the emergency out of hours service. On Sunday I woke up with stabbing/needle pains below my right ribs and did just that, I was seen very quickly when I got there, my bp was higher than it had been on Friday, but it still only needed monitoring as there were no signs that I was developing pre-eclampsia.
On Monday morning I booked an appointment with my GP to have it tested again that afternoon. I did my best to make sure that it would be good for them, setting off with plenty of time to get there so that I could have a nice long-ish sit down before the actually appointment. Unfortunately, it didn't work. My first reading was 180/117. There's a little table near the start of this Wiki entry that says that's a very bad blood pressure to have. My second reading at the doctor's (taken an hour later) was in the high 170's for systolic and over 100 diastolic.
I was referred to the day assessment unit on the maternity ward. Owen drove me there, when I arrived they said they had expected me to arrive in an ambulance.
They assessed me, one doctor wanted to induce me (as the only cure to gestational high blood pressure is delivery of the baby), I let him know that I'd been advised not be induced by an anesthetist, they got the on call anesthetist in and the plan changed to give me blood pressure medication and if there is no improvement send me for an emergency c-section.
As an aside, it bothers me that every anesthetist I've met this week already knows me by reputation. I've been having a lot of comments along the lines of "I've already heard of your situation" and it bothers me that I'm considered such an exception and problematic case that I have a reputation. I mean given that I didn't even see an anesthetist until I was 34 weeks pregnant (which, incidentally, is the same day that my blood pressure started to show signs of being high - and yes, I do think the two things are related), when I'd had a perfectly healthy pregnancy up to then and it was far too late for me to do anything about my situation, was there really a need to make me feel like shit for being fat? After all, I had been trying to lose weight before I got pregnant and quite frankly I hadn't expected it to happen so quickly! Anyway, this paragraph is stressing me out, so I'll move back to the details of what happened.
I was moved into a delivery suite, where I was attended to by absolutely lovely midwives and student midwives. I was put on monitors to see if the baby was in distress (she wasn't), my blood pressure was checked every 15 minutes and the monitors showed that I was having "tightenings" of the tummy / very mild contractions. My blood pressure went down gradually and once my blood results came back as normal I was moved to Iffley ward for more casual monitoring.
Owen wasn't allowed to stay with me on Iffley ward, so he went home around 12:30. I had a little bit of a cry, it had been a very long and tiring day, and hospital wards are pretty lonely places. They checked my blood pressure at 1:30 ish and I managed to get a little bit of sleep until around 3:30 when I woke up and was thinking too much to sleep again. I checked the timing of my medication with the midwife, the doctor had put it down as 8am - 2pm - 8pm, but a midwife had suggested that it should be taken every 8 hours i.e. 8pm - 4am - 12pm. The midwife reassured me that I'd get meds at 6am, so there wouldn't be a huge 12 hour gap in between tablets. I tried to sleep, but kept waking up, either due to hospital noises, when I got my meds and bp tested at 6am or a few times with my own pre-sleep-snoring.
I stayed in bed until 8 ish. The arrival daylight made me feel a bit better and talking to a couple of ladies in the dining room for breakfast also helped move my head away from everything that was happening to me. One of the things about Iffley ward is that it's for women that have complications before or after the birth, so everyone has their own horror story about what's happening to them. This sounds like a horrible thing to have to listen to, but it put my incident into perspective for me, my bp was dropping with almost every check up, my blood results had been fine, in comparison I was one of the healthy ones on the ward.
The doctor came to see me somewhere between between 9 and half past. He said that he'd like me to be kept in for 24 hours to see if the medicine was working, so I knew the earliest I would get out would be Wednesday. I was strapped up to the fetal heart rate monitor again and Owen arrived to keep me company. I was getting lots of lovely supportive messages on Facebook and a few offers of visits - I just wasn't sure if I would be awake enough to handle visitors very well. Anyway, the day passed reasonably easily, my bp stayed at reasonable levels, my Dad came to visit and towards the end of the day I was feeling up to Hannah and Sam visiting too.
I cried again when Hannah and Owen left. My roomie had been discharged earlier in the day so I was completely alone for a little while. It seemed like the night would last forever. Also, I was very, very tired! The same midwife team was on again that night and they were really sweet - I can't praise the midwives in Reading enough, they are all very kind, professional and treat me really well; every midwife and student midwife (well, except the midwife in charge of me at hospital on Tuesday during the day, but I'm choosing to ignore her) I've met, whether a community midwife or a ward midwife at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, has been amazing. Because they knew how little sleep I'd got the night before they waited until I woke up at 5:40 to take my bp and they gave me my meds then too. I then got right back to sleep until the morning and woke up feeling pretty chirpy.
Wednesday was slow going, I was no longer in any risk so I wasn't a high priority, meaning I didn't get seen until fairly late in the morning. I was okay with that, because I knew it meant that they weren't worried about me, it just really dragged, especially as I'd told Owen to go to work now that I wasn't in danger and everyone else isn't allowed to visit until after 3! The doctor that day said that if everything checked out okay I could go home. The bit that got to me the most was that I was feeling really sticky and I wanted a shower, I'd asked if I could get one in the morning around 9:30, but the midwife (thankfully a different one to Tuesday day-time) wanted me to have all my tests first, however, because I was low priority I didn't get my shower until after 3pm!
Two new ladies joined me in my room, both of them had been induced, or rather had just been given the medication to be induced and were waiting for it to start working. My Dad came to see me again, we watched the football and played Blokus (2-player), which Dad won, I hadn't been thinking strategically, but have a good idea about how to win next time. At half time we went to see if my results had come back and to go for a walk, they had and just needed to be looked at by a doctor. We went for a coffee and when we got back I was told that I would be allowed to go home. I got discharged and Dad took me home. I'm really lucky to have him and Julie so close at hand, they've both been so good and I feel a lot safer having one of our three sets of parents being less than 20 minutes away.
It was really good to be home. Getting to cuddle Owen properly, watching Biggles try to hump White like a crazy thing and sleeping in my own bed - bliss!
We had another appointment at the hospital on Thursday, this one was to go over the details of my planned c-section. Thankfully we met the first anesthetist that said she didn't think I would be as much of a problem as everyone else had led me to believe (we've already met a few doctor's that are in favour of me having a natural birth too). She'll be looking after me on Thursday, so I'm really happy about that as she seems confident in her abilities and is also rather nice. It also made me happier about what will happen if I do go into labour before then... I'm seriously considering eating spicy curries, going for walks in the countryside, eating pineapple and drinking raspberry leaf tea to try and move it along now ;-)
Unfortunately Biggles has come down with a chest infection, which Owen noticed on Thursday, so Owen took him to the vet's last night. He seems to be improving a bit now. We also went out on our last date before baby arrives and had a rather nice meal at The Swan in Pangbourne.
TL:DR - I've been in hospital because I had dangerously high blood pressure on Monday, they've given me medication that is leveling it out, the plan is still to go for a c-section on the 25th unless I go into labour before then.