Pregnancy and high blood pressure: Part two

By Ann M. Curtis (pictured with her daughter, Caitlin)

It was humbling to breeze through six months of pregnancy relatively unscathed. However, the last trimester more than made up for it. In fact, the last three months weren’t much of a picnic at all.

As I entered my seventh month, my OB told me to begin arranging things at work, because I could, at any moment, be ordered on bed rest. She was afraid the baby was going to come too early (she was thinking inducing, not naturally), and really wanted to have the baby make it to the 35-week mark, ensuring the lungs would be fully developed and that the baby would have a better chance of not having any complications.

Bed rest

Five weeks before my due date, my OB asked me how soon I could arrange to go on complete bed rest. I had finished up coordinating our office move; I thought about what was still outstanding in terms of work and told her a day and a half. She said, "good, tell them you’re going on doctor-prescribed bed rest."

And that was it. I spent one week at home, resting. Now, that sounds like heaven, doesn’t it? Getting to lie around all day, doing nothing but reading magazines and books, watching TV, contemplating life.

Yeah, it’s fun for all of about two hours. Then tedium and boredom set in. I mean, I had to lie on my left side for just about the entire time. Writing, reading…everything’s hard to do when you’re lying on one of your arms. And after awhile, the back gets sore from kinking it around so you can do something. Doctor’s orders were to lie down and only get up to eat and go to the bathroom. I’d always thought it would be so nice to have the opportunity to just lie around and do nothing. Boring.

A week after bed rest started my husband took my blood pressure one evening, and it was dangerously high. So we rushed to the hospital to see the triage nurse on duty. As luck would have it, my OB was also on duty that night. We’d been instructed to pack our “delivery bag” and bring that with, too. Good thing. She put me in the hospital that night.

In the hospital

And so began another week of bed rest, only this one in the hospital. If I thought lying on the sofa at home was boring, being in the hospital was a downright bummer. I ceased to have any privacy or autonomy whatsoever and was subjected to pokes and prods, blood pressure checks, ketosis watch (yep, had to do that pee collection thing again), and periodic fetal monitoring graphs.

My husband had to work, so I was left to entertain myself during the day. I’ve never been much of a television watcher, so that didn’t interest me much. Besides, just how much TV could a person reasonable watch in a sixteen-hour day? It doesn’t take long for the brain to turn mushy.

I was bored out of my mind when a lady stopped one day and brought in a large tote packed with little projects. I found a Search-A-Word book and spent most of my time with that. Thankful my brain wouldn’t go to mush after all, that little book helped save my sanity for a few more days.

While I was in the hospital that week, I ballooned up from water retention. My fingers and toes became plump little sausages, and my ankles swelled up, too. I didn’t know it at the time, but this wasn’t good. I hadn’t retained water until that point—and I was still three weeks from my due date.

Time to induce

Finally, my OB told me she was going to induce. We’d talked about it, and my husband and I both knew it was very likely this was going to happen.

So began the long, arduous journey of inducing. I was slated to have my baby on Thursday. Monday started with a guy who inserted some sort of gel medication in my vagina. Tuesday, another guy gave me another drug. I think I also received one on Wednesday. All of the drugs, I was told, were to help ready my body for delivery—since I wasn’t going to be going through the normal “delivery route.” The drugs were to “fake” my body into thinking it was time for me to deliver.

My blood pressure was also constantly monitored, as were the baby’s vital signs (they put a belt around me belly and a ticker tape told them the baby’s heart rate and other vitals). Wednesday night my doctor came and told us I was officially pre-eclampic as of that morning. However, I wasn’t at an alarmist level; I was at 300. Since the spectrum went all the way to 3,000, I was relatively low on the eclampsia totem pole. However, it did mean that baby was slated to be born the next morning, without delay.

Delivery day

Delivery day dawned bright and early. I gathered all my stuff and moved from my “confinement” room down the hall to a birthing room—a room that was a lot more cheery and welcoming. After receiving another birthing prep medicine, it was pretty much wait and see. By lunch time, I still had no pain or contractions. The nurse made me get up to use the bathroom before she put my IV in. Yep, that did it. By the time I got back in bed, my body knew something was going on.

But my body didn’t want to cooperate. At five o’clock that evening, when my OB stopped in to see me, she told me I was moving along too slow and popped my water. Sheez, nothing like releasing the flood gates and inviting the pain in. From that moment on, oh yeah, I definitely knew we had something started.

(An aside: I’ve always felt a little cheated that I never got the opportunity to experience the “normal” parts of labor. The nesting syndrome. The breaking of water, signaling now is the time to get to the hospital. All the stages the body is supposed to naturally go through when giving birth. Even the birthing was contrived. Don’t get me wrong; I wanted to deliver a healthy baby. I just felt deprived that nature didn’t have a chance to do it her way.)

But I felt overwhelming gratitude to my OB that she was going to allow me to deliver naturally. If complications arose, there would be a C-section. But by and large, she preferred to allow me to have the baby vaginally. A normal child birthing is better for the body all around.

About nine o’clock that night, I suddenly had the urge to push. Up until that time, there was no one in the room other than my husband and me. My OB was down the hall helping someone else deliver a baby, and the hospital staff was light; we happened to be there Easter weekend.

Party in the delivery room

Once my husband went and found someone and told them I had the urge to push, our birthing room became busy. Of course, I couldn’t push right then, because I wasn’t dilated enough. But our room filled up with enough people that we could have had our own little party.

I don’t recall much after that; everything’s in bits and pieces. I know I had two IV bags going, a saline solution and the other meds. Right when the party moved to my room I had a pain shot, but other than the one, I lived through the pain. At some point when I was still coherent a fetal monitor was strapped to my tummy so they could watch and see if the baby was in distress.

My husband and I had been through childbirth classes, and the breathing exercises really helped work through the labor pains. There was only one time when I felt like clobbering my husband, and that was during a breathing exercise. We bought a small stuffed lamb as our “fixture point,” and one time when I needed to breathe through a labor contraction, my husband moved the lamb’s head and made him do something funny. Let me tell you, it’s hard to laugh and breath at the same time—especially when you’re trying to breath through a contraction. I told him not to make me laugh. The nurse on duty at the time said to me, “They just don’t understand, do they.” It felt good to have a sympathizer.

Finally, four hours after everyone invaded my birthing room, the time came for the baby to come. I was dilated enough, and the little munchkin was going to be born. By this point, I was exhausted. It took everything I had to push. My OB gave me a small episiotomy; my husband told me later that he heard my OB doctor and the resident doctor talking amongst themselves that, if the baby’s head didn’t crown soon, they were going to have to really cut me.

Thank God that never came to pass!

She's here!

Then my OB stood up, grabbed my attention and, in a loud voice, pointed at the screen: the baby’s heartbeat was very low and dropping. She said, this push has got to get the head out. I pushed, and out came the baby’s head. For those of you wondering about the “ring of fire,” sorry, can’t help you. I never experienced it.

After that, my OB told me one more BIG push to get the baby the rest of the way out. I did, and out came our baby daughter. There is a definite feeling of the baby leaving the body—it’s not something I can easily describe—and on the tail of that feeling I experienced a blinding sharp pain across my abdomen.

It felt like someone took a butcher knife and sliced me open. It hurt worse than delivering the baby. When I mentioned it to my OB, she told me that her work was done and that I’d have to bring it up with my regular doctor. Yes, I know her work was finished; thank goodness I didn’t bleed to death or something. (I suffered an abdominal hernia giving birth.)

At 1:21 am on Good Friday, my daughter was born. The first time I saw her, she gave me this little puzzled look that said, “Why am I here? I was comfy in there!” Sorry, sweet baby, for having disturbed your wonderful cocoon and making you arrive early. She was there, well and healthy, and that had been everyone’s main concern and goal all along.

My high-risk pregnancy had turned out just fine.

Coming next week:

Part Three: The aftermath of delivery

About Ann:

Ann Curtis resides with her husband and daughter in Madison, Wisconsin. At the age of 29, Ann found out she had high blood pressure. Pregnancy hormones forced her to manage her (mild childhood) asthma and allergies with medication and, a few years later, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and atophic dermatitis decided to drop in as well. She has been pursuing a writing career for more years than she cares to acknowledge, and owns AC Proofing Services, for which she does manuscript assessments and editorial services. She’s currently writing a romantic suspense and working as an editor for Loose Id.

Posted: 5/31/2007 in Family

Find dozens of ChronicBabe-recommended books, CDs, DVDs and more. Visit the ChronicBabe Amazon shop today!

By Date: