Katie & Justin

In July I started having some issues with high blood pressure when I would get it checked at the doctor’s office. There was one Friday afternoon appointment in particular where the doctor said she wanted to see me again on Monday to check it one more time. She said if it was high again there was a chance I’d have to go straight to the hospital for monitoring.

The only problem (or at least, another problem) was that Justin and I were planning on leaving for a brief getaway to Michigan that Monday. I was just about at the cut-off point for being able to travel, so we booked a last minute trip to Saugatuck for one last vacation before baby and also to celebrate our anniversary, which was that Tuesday.

I told the doctor about our plans and she was able to squeeze me in early Monday morning before we were going to hit the road, but I was still nervous all weekend that I’d end up at the hospital instead. I reaaaaally didn’t want to miss our trip, or even part of it! It was only going to be two nights, plus it was pretty expensive since it was their “high season.”

The other looming problem was that stress can cause your blood pressure to increase so just worrying about it being high can sometimes make it go up. I had been suspecting this was part of the issue, considering having to pee in a cup led me to panic before, but they also said sometimes it can just be the pregnancy that causes it to rise, too. Either way, I tried to relax and stay calm all weekend.

Then Monday morning came and thankfully my blood pressure numbers were okay. Phew! Michigan here we come!

But, first they said they still wanted to check one more thing and proceeded to hook me up to a machine to monitor the baby’s heartbeat. Now this is standard procedure at all my appointments but at the time I had no idea what they were doing. What could be wrong with the heartbeat?!

After strapping a band around my stomach and starting the monitor, the nurse left the room, saying they had to let it run for five to 10 minutes and then she’d be back. The baby’s heartbeat started booming so loudly through the speaker, and the machine began churning out paper charts with all sorts of squiggly lines. Is that good or bad?! 

For whatever reason, it totally freaked me out. You’d think it would be a nice thing to hear your baby’s heart beating, but apparently not this time — and not for that long. I immediately started feeling faint and sweating profusely. I sat up to try and put my head between my legs but I had the band and the monitor on my stomach. Shoot, am I ruining the recordings now?

I ended up pressing the call button, and the nurse came in saying, “You don’t look so good. What happened?”

Nothing, really. 

“Uhhh, I’m not sure,” I said.

A second nurse came in and the two held ice packs on my forehead and on my neck. Then the doctor came in, too, to see if everything was okay. I had started to feel better pretty quickly after they put the ice packs on, but then I just felt stupid there was this big production and nothing was wrong at all! It was pretty much just all in my head.

The good news was everything was fine and I was free to go off to Michigan. The bad news was realizing how am I going to handle labor in the hospital when just the heart monitor made me almost faint?!