July 11, 2013

Up until this point, we had gone nearly another two months with no hospital visits! Thankfully, however, the visit on this day was not nearly as stressful and almost didn't even happen. I had been at my parent's house the night before, and mentioned to my mom that I had had a few more headaches and periods of light-headedness lately. She mentioned this in a phone call to my sister, who called me and encouraged me to call my doctor, as these can be signs of pre-eclampsia or hypertension. Knowing that nothing is just a simple phone call to my doctor, I waited until the next morning to call. The highest I had seen my blood pressure was 144, but that was after vacuuming. We (as a family) also had been undergoing a lot of stress lately with my dad's ailing health (that is for another post), so this is what I attributed my headaches to.

As expected, once I called the advice nurse, things went from slightly concerning to red alert real fast. Within the first phone call, she asked me a bunch of questions, then told me to take Tylenol and call her back if the headache did not go away by the afternoon. I was satisfied with this answer. But then the nurse called back. She said she talked it over with the doctor on duty (not my normal doctor), and he wanted me to go to Labor and Delivery to get checked out. She told me to call my husband and get there ASAP.

So, this is where we dwelled for the next four hours. We did fetal monitoring via the contraction belt and listened to his heartbeat (it was strong, and I had some mild contractions). The doctor ordered an echocardiogram as well, the results of which the doctor in L&D said looked slightly better than the last test (this could be due to variances in technician's skills). In the end, my blood pressure was lower, my urine showed no protein, and the doctors were satisfied that my headaches were going away with Tylenol. So, we left the hospital with no news being good news, but I sure could've spent those four hours in more productive ways. At least it was nice having peace of mind that Baby Dylan was okay :-).