I've visited labor and delivery twice in the past 24 hours. No, I'm not in labor yet, but my body certainly feels like it's revolting against the 3rd trimester of this pregnancy. You know how sick we've all been-- I thought that towards the end of last week, we were all starting to get a little better.
Tues night, I got a headache-- a bad one that felt like a migraine. Since I'm not able to take my migraine meds, I took a Fioricet and hoped that I could sleep it off. No luck. I woke up with it yesterday and took another dose. Still no better. I took a 3rd dose around 5pm and decided to go check my blood pressure. One of the things my new doctor warned me about was a chronic severe headache and elevated blood pressure. So, when it was 156/95, I went ahead and called the on call doc, who told me to go straight to labor & delivery.
I was there about three hours-- blood work looked good, no protein in my urine and baby looked good on the monitors, so they focused on getting rid of my pain. They gave me a shot of Nubain and sent me home. The meds made me feel drunk and I threw up, but I slept ok after that.
This morning, I woke up with the headache. I called the doc, who asked me to check my blood pressure, then call them back. It was 150/101. Back to the hospital I went-- I was able to go to the office first, where I saw my old doctor. I had an internal-- I'm 2cm and 50% effaced. I had another ultrasound and everything was measuring perfectly. It's tough to determine whether elevated blood pressure is causing my headaches or if the pain of these headaches is causing my blood pressure to rise. Either way, she said she'd feel more comfortable having me monitored again today...so back to L&D I went.
My labs all came back normal and after a shot of Phenergan for the headache, I was sent home with orders to be on bed rest and to come back on Monday. My doctor mentioned (several times) that since I was full term, there wasn't much benefit to keeping me pregnant much longer. She said that they don't treat high blood pressure with meds this late in pregnancy-- the treatment is to get the baby out.
Additionally, I'm having horrible congestion with a bad cough that keeps me up all night-- same old, same old that's been plaguing me for the past 4 weeks. I'm convinced that my body just can't shake it because the pregnancy is using every bit of energy that my body has left. The doctor prescribed a Z-pack along with a prescription cough medicine. Rob went to pick them up tonight only to find that the nurse that I don't like never bothered to call them in-- even after checking twice today before I left the hospital. I'm furious & miserable.
As much as I really wanted to go into labor on my own, I'm bracing myself for scheduling an induction for sometime next week at Mon's appt. My body has already made more progress on it's own now that it had when I got my epidural at Liam's induction. The vital things that I felt like needed to be done, will be taken care of by the end of the weekend...everything else can wait. It might have to.
I'll update more when there's news!
