Saturday, June 16, 2012

And...first trip to Labor & Delivery

So Friday, we made our first trip to Labor & Delivery. But let me back up a little.

For the past week, I've been freaking out blood pressure again. On my monitor, it was up in the 130/80 range. Not crazy high, but too high for my liking. No big deal, I had an appointment Friday where I was going to discuss it with the doctor.

Then Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from the doctor's office. I failed my one hour glucose test. I honestly did NOT expect this. I get that I've always had the world's slowest metabolism, but I always associated gestational diabetes with gaining tons of weight. I'm not exactly packing it on with gaining about 5 pounds so far. So I have to do the three hour test. I know, I know...the false positive rate for the 1 hour is ridiculous. But breakdown number one came when I got that call and just felt so defeated. Here I was dealing with potential GD and blood pressure issues...can my body just not handle pregnancy at all?

And then, I started googling. Now, I've googled literally thousands of different pregnancy related things. And for the record, once it made me feel better. The other 999 times it has sent me into a sheer panic. So this is exactly what I should be doing, right?

Turns out gestational diabetes can cause pre-eclampsia to progress faster. Cue major meltdown. And to make it worse, the clinic can't get me in to get my 3 hour test done until the TWENTY-FIFTH. That is a week and a half away! I was convinced my self-diagnosed pre-eclampsia levels would be horrid by then.

So I go to my appointment Friday. I really, really love my doctor. He "gets" me. Blood pressure is still a bit elevated (140/80 or 90, depending on which reading you believe). Not really high for an office reading, actually. But I went over my concerns with him and he did such an awesome job of listening, but telling me that he is confident that all my googling is in vain once again. The high blood pressure he thinks may be just a spike as blood volume continues to adjust, and with no other pre-eclampsia signs, I DO NOT have it right now. And GD? Well, it is basically 50/50 that I have it, and he's confident that even if I do it can be easily controlled via diet. And those two things ONLY play into each other when GD is insulin-dependent.

I was feeling much better. But then he asked if I would still freak out about all of this during the week. Um, yes. Freaking out is what I do. So he told me to go to triage, get monitored, run some initial bloodwork, and that should put my mind at ease.

So off to the hospital we went. Except we really had no idea where we were going. Yup, total newbies right here. So once we figured out we were supposed to be in Labor & Delivery Triage and not just general Triage, things went smoothly. We were put in a room and I was hooked up to the monitors. Baby E was NOT happy at all about the monitors. She was kicking them like a crazy woman. My abdomen is so sore today because of her antics. Loved the nurses we had there, they were so nice and knowledgeable. My blood pressure was not great when we got there 140/90 but dropped dramatically shortly afterwards (like 100/60...whoa). They ran some bloodwork and everything looks great. Liver and kidneys still functioning within normal levels. Phew! One less thing to worry about.

No wonder my blood pressure is doing WAY better today. And other than the instructions to take it easy until my next appointment on Friday, I'm good to go.

Hopefully I won't have to be back to L&D for a couple months, but overall not a bad first visit.


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