L&D: a visit

My title makes it sounds like I'm about to recount the appointment I was supposed to make with the public health nurse to go visit the Pleasantville Birthing Unit (PBU).

But no. I was sent over today after my OB really took a strong dislike to my blood pressure numbers. 138/96 with the nurse, and the diastolic above 100 when Dr. Smiley took it. So much for my 1pm therapy patient.

Mr. A looked as though his legendary low blood pressure visited the stratosphere when I drove back home after the OB to tell him I was going to the hospital. 'Calm down', I said, 'they just want to monitor the baby and do blood work.'

We got a lovely nurse who chased gummy around with her external monitoring probe, warmly calling her the kidlet. Gummy finally settled and the monitoring could start. My b/p was still silly high at this point, even though I felt pretty calm overall. We spent about 1.5 hours there, by the time they got the blood work results back and the urine test. The on-call OB reviewed my symptoms with me after the blood work came back squeaky clean. We have: 1) high blood pressure and 2) epigastric pain. Nothing else really. When we reviewed that together, I said, as a conclusive statement, 'so, hypertension of pregnancy then?'*. He smiled at me sideways and asked what I do for a living.

So he put me on meds. Labe.talol. A beta-blocker. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but we have to do something to make this b/p go down before it becomes pre-eclampsia.  

I go back to L&D tomorrow for another non stress test. Dr. Smiley will be on call, so she will make some decisions. She talked about stopping work sooner than later. She said Gummy would be evicted at 38 weeks if the b/p keeps being high. That's a week from Monday. Oh goodness me. She also did say it was time to stop going to the gym. Too bad. I liked my morning walks on the treadmill.

We had an u/s on Monday and Gummy looked fantastic. She is definitely a she. And what a cutie! Her weight was estimated at 6lbs 6oz, so I think that if she does need to be out early, she'll be a good size.

I'll keep you posted on what happens tomorrow, lovelies.
Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts.  


* the subtext being: 'as opposed to full blown pre-eclampsia')