Doctor's Appointment

I had my first awful doctor's appointment this morning. Hopefully it will be the last, but I have a feeling I have a few more trying appointments in the near future to get through.

My blood pressure, which was amazing throughout my pregnancy, has now skyrocketed from 100 to 140 in a month. This is causing my doctor to be worried about preeclampsia which has made her schedule a whole slew of tests and appointments to get through the next six weeks.

Preeclampsia is caused by high-blood pressure in pregnant women. It can cause the baby to have a low birth weight as well as other non-identified issues. The most damage that it causes is with the mother. Some of the things that I may have to worry about are seizures during labor, organ issues, premature delivery, as well as some others. It can be treated, but the only cure is delivery of the baby. This usually causes women with preeclampsia to be induced before their due date.

There are a number of symptoms leading to preeclampsia that I do not have including extreme swelling, headaches, rib/diaphragm pain. The one that I do have is the spike in blood pressure. Another symptom is protein in the urine, which I will be testing for tomorrow.

This development is causing me to have to do a 24-hour urine collection so that the doctor's can use that "huge" sample to test for protein. I also have to go into the doctor every week to have an ultrasound and a Non-stress test (the babies heart rate is monitored for a half hour). These tests will make sure that the condition if there is one is not negatively affecting the baby and that everything is still developing as it should.

All of this information is a little hard to swallow, especially for a person who has not had any other real issues throughout this entire pregnancy. I'm doing my best to get through this without thinking of all the possible bad outcomes (totally where my mind always goes). At least with the careful monitoring, if anything does go wrong, the doctor will know sooner and will have the best chance of remedying the situation.