And So It Starts

Cool. A picture of the items in my refrigerator. Nice. Who cares, right?

Well, the hot pink arrow is NOT pointing to an orange juice container. It's actually pointing to my urine. In a jug. On the top shelf of my fridge.

Cool.

So it allllll starts. More BPs. More frequent Dr Appts. More urine collections. More blood work. Here. We. Go. Again.

The story goes like this...

On Wednesday April 11, I had my 22 week check up at the Dr's office. I saw my original gynecologist which is rare. She only saw me a few times when I was pregnant with Charlotte and each time she saw me, I was being difficult with my blood pressure. So I knew it wasn't an amazing sign when I found out she would be the one seeing me. She was standing close when I walked through the door of the office and they weighed me. I turn around to be weighed. It stresses me out to think I am just going to get larger and larger and larger so I just don't look at the scale. I haven't looked at it one time this pregnancy. She heard me tell the nurse, "I've found that if I don't look at my weight, my blood pressure remains lower." Dr. Molly chuckled to herself as she charted on a patient. Off to get my blood pressure. DUM DUM DUM!!!!!!!!!!

I was wrong.

Blood pressure was 180/90 in the right arm . A few minutes later it was 172/90 in the left arm.

Perfect.

They sent me to my little exam room... (all of this occurring with Charlotte on my hip bc I didn't know at the time if she had pink eye or not so she couldn't go see Niki while I did all of this.)

They say, "Lay on your left side." Seriously? I have a 14 month old with me and no one to watch her. She's bored. She's sick. She hates her life today. Lay on my left side on an elevated table and let her run wild in a room with LOTS of things she can NOT touch. Yeah, right. But I tried to obey. After about 10 minutes, they came in. Dr. Molly played with Charlotte while her and I talked and the nurse/assistant too my BP.

164/90.

PHEW! It's coming down.

We sat and talked a bit while she tended to Charlotte. My current diagnosis is Hypertension in Pregnancy. My urine was clear of protein (which is what brings about the preeclampsia diagnosis) so she was very pleased with that. However, she wanted to get some base line lab work including my 24 hour urine... last pregnancy they did at least 5 24 hour urines on me and COUNTLESS labs. After her and I had a long talk about everything that is going on in my life, she agrees that the problem right now is probably stress. She believes that all of the stress I am under has probably made my blood pressure fly off the handle. When I told her I was planning to come to Illinois to see my family and get some help with Charlotte for a  month, she thought it was a great idea...and was much needed. She just wanted to make sure I was seen by a physician at some point in that month.

And so it starts.

The plus side is that since I am SUPER stressed, this high blood pressure could very well be caused by all of that. My hope is that when the stress dies down and I can reunite with my husband, move my 2400 square feet worth of items 6 hours away, get my current home taken care of, meanwhile raise my 14 month old, my cat, and a grow a healthy baby ALL BY MYSELF...once all of that is done or I can share the responsibility with my husband, I am hoping to be back to "normal" and good as new... with a lower BP.

We shall see.