Ignoring Doctor's Advice
High blood pressure has no symptoms and doctors say that you can't tell when you have it. Mine slowly crept up during my pregnancy. The doctors were telling me to take it easy, but I didn't feel sick. On July 17th I was taken out of work due to pregnancy induced hypertension, and the early signs of pre-eclampsia or toxemia. I was ordered to 24 hour bed rest, where I was supposed to lie on my left side. Well, just try to lie on your left side all day when you have your nesting instinct kicking in, you feel very unprepared to welcome a baby and you don't feel sick. Unfortunately, I didn't know just running to the store for one thing, cleaning a closet or going to the track would result in a horrible labor and delivery.
On Monday August 3rd, the doctors wouldn't take "can't we wait a few more days?" for an answer. My blood pressure was dangerously high, and I was at a risk for seizures that would endanger my life and the baby's. We arrived at Albany Medical Center at about 12:30 pm and got settled. They started Pitocin, a drug used to induce labor, at 3:30. The contractions started slowly at first, in fact I couldn't tell I was having them until about 6:00 and then they didn't hurt. I was not allowed to get up and move around because of the IV's and the blood pressure cuff that was going off every 15 minutes.
My doctor only wanted me laboring on my left side. The contractions started to hurt around midnight, and got worse when my water broke around 1:30 am August 4th. By 4:30 am I was in excruciating pain and the contractions were two minutes apart. I was only 4cm dilated. The doctor was threatening to give me magnesium sulfate to make sure I did not have a seizure. The nurse told me magnesium sulfate is so devastating, I would not be able to care for my baby for a few days. She said if I got an epidural it would lower my pressure and relieve the pain. It would not lessen the contractions since they were artificially induced anyway. Between the contractions, I agreed. It took the anesthesiologist two tries to get the epidural in, but what a relief when it worked. I finally had a chance to sleep. When I woke up most of the epidural had worn off. I started to feel the contractions again and was back in hard labor. Even though they "topped-off" the epidural from time to time, since I could not sit up, I could still feel the contractions. By 3:30 pm the 4th, the baby and I were exhausted. His heart beat started to become irregular. They decided to stop the Pitocin to give us a break, and gave me oxygen to help him rest.
