2017-18 Pregnancy Week 36

At my appointment just before I was 36 weeks, this was a Monday, they mentioned to me that my blood pressure was a little higher than normal but that I was still within a normal range. They told me that they were going to watch it at each of my appointments from then on. I began having NSTs (non-stress tests) which monitor both me and the babies to make sure we're all doing ok and to make sure that I wasn't having contractions unknowingly the week before and had another during that appointment. Everything went great! The second time I had it done they had some trouble making sure they had both babies as their heart rates were so similar! A couple days later, on Wednesday, I noticed that I had a headache. I had some shopping to do that day and while I was out I had this feeling that I should buy an auto blood pressure cuff, and so I did. When I got home I took my blood pressure and it was really high. So I messaged my nurse friend who had me recheck it and it was still high. I messaged Randy and let him know what was going on. My nurse friend had me take some tylenol for my headache and told me to try to relax and retest in a couple hours. The tylenol did not even touch my headache. And when I retested my blood pressure it was not any better than before. We decided to go in to labor and delivery to be checked out just in case.

Once in labor and delivery they took me to an examination room to be checked out. They immediately had me all hooked up to machines monitoring my blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen, as well as, an NST machine to keep an eye on the babies and myself. My blood pressure was still high and I still had a headache so they gave me some medication called fentanyl. That also did not touch my headache. We were there for a few hours while they monitored my blood pressure, which finally did go down. The doctor on call came in to talk with us. She said that since I still had the headache despite the medication they gave me they were hesitant to send me home. But since my blood pressure was back down into normal range and because I already had an appointment the next day with my doctor, she was going to allow us to go home, on the condition that if the headache worsened that we came right back to be induced. So we went home.

Me all hooked up at the hospital.

The next day (Thursday), my headache was slightly better and stayed that way all day. At my appointment that afternoon, my doctor immediately was asking us what we wanted to do. She recommended that we induce ASAP before things got worse and we agreed with her. She asked us if we wanted to just plan for a c-section or if we wanted to attempt a vaginal delivery as Baby B was again transverse and could flip either direction. We trusted my doctor's knowledge enough and decided to go ahead with the vaginal delivery. She then checked me to see where I was at dilation-wise. I was dilated to a 3.5 and was 80% effaced which she was happy about because that makes a great starting point. We were scheduled to be induced that next morning and were told to be at the hospital by 7am.

Til next time!
Becca