In addition to the 2 hour stay at the hospital in mid August (see the "Avoiding Bedrest" post), I spent a couple hours there in early September and then again a week or so after that due to my blood pressure (BP)...
The second stay was much like the first with my OB increasing my meds and things leveling out again. Then on Saturday September 12, things got complicated...
I had a couple of things going on that day: a 12 hour scrapbooking crop at my church and a good friend's baby shower... I went to the crop for a little bit them headed to the shower... I felt fine...
When I got back to the crop, my feet were pretty swollen and my BP was a bit elevated but nothing too horrible so I worked on a project that would be my gift to my husband for his birthday... when I was done, I checked my BP again and it had gone up. There is an area at the church that has nice leather couches so I went to lay down for a while. When I woke an hour later, by BP had actually gone up so I decided it was time to head home and rest...
On my way home, I decided to just go straight to the hospital... the last 2 times I had gone in, it had been at night when there was no one there I knew and the desk folks were kinda dumb... it was about 5pm so I figured I would go in, have nurses there I knew, and be home by 8 or 9 after everything came back normal just like it had the previous 2 times...
When I walked in, the looks on the nurses' faces kinda worried me... they said I was really puffy and immediately took my BP... 193/110... normal is 120s to 130s/70s to 80s... they put me in a room and told me they didn't think I would be going anywhere anytime soon. They brought in a box I had never seen before and set it near the sink, then proceeded to start an IV... not something I had ever had them do before so I knew it was bad. I found out later it was precautions they use when one is at risk for seizures... nice...
My blood work and urine tests came back normal just like before but they wanted me to do a 24 hour urine collection again... and because my BP was so high, they wanted me to stay to have it collected... so I called my husband to tell him what to bring me for what I thought would be just a one-night stay.
I was there until Monday morning.
The on-call OB told me the 24 hour urine came back normal but since it was so late (9pm Sunday night) that they wanted me to stay one more night, have my OB talk to me on Monday morning, and play it by ear from there. Now, my OB trusts me and my judgement so I figured I would be headed home on Monday with more meds and an order to decrease my hours at work.
When my OB called late Monday morning, she told me the 24 hour urine had actually come back at mild pre-eclampsic levels and she wanted to induce. I asked her if we could just increase my meds and wait until later in the week, knowing that my BP would go down once I was home, in my own bed, cuddling with Bailey. She was not real pleased with that and wanted to know why I wanted to prolong the inevitable... I told her we had another family member who was having an elective c-section on Tuesday and my mom was going to be with her and neither my husband nor I wanted to have our kids sharing birthdays... My OB said she was fine waiting until Wednesday to induce but wanted me to stay at the hospital until then... I begged her to let me go home... I told her I really needed to sleep in my own bed and I missed my dog... luckily she is a dog person, too, said I could go as long as I would agree to come back to start the induction process on Tuesday evening.
So home I went to relax in my bed with my dog while my mom and baby brother unloaded the scrapbooking stuff from my car and packed my bag for the hospital...
