Pre-eclampsia or Anxiety-induced Hypertension?

I had another appointment today and a few things happened.

1. My ankles were swollen to holy hell (that's a technical term).
2. My diastolic blood pressure was still in the danger zone (a.k.a. pre-hypertension) and my systolic was a little higher than it often is at my appointments.
3. My weight hadn't changed since last week (woohoo!).
4. My belly had somehow increased in size by 2 cm.

The result? They tested my urine...for sugar and for proteins. Yeah. Not good.

The good thing is there wasn't either present.

The bad thing is that I still have to keep an eye on all these things because if I have something else happen (like headaches, nausea, or regular vision disturbances) then I will have to do a 24 hour protein panel.

If you've never been pregnant or had any experience with these kinds of symptoms in a pregnant lady, then let me enlighten you - they're worried about pre-eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia is the most common (and one of the most deadly) pregnancy complications you can have. Even still I think it's only about 6% of pregnant ladies who are blessed with the annoying thing. The reason it is so serious is because it can lead to some pretty awful things happening during childbirth - like hemorrhaging, seizures, strokes, heartattacks...death...

Ahem.

Yeah.

Needless to say, my midwives don't think I have it, but the combination of things does lead them to want to keep an eye out. I have, the entire time I've been seeing them, had higher diastolic numbers. I do, as a general rule (like since forever because, hey it's inherited) have horrible circulation which makes things like getting fluid up my legs pretty difficult. Then of course, there's also the fact that I'm generally a nervous person...which doesn't help with blood pressure.

The nerves thing isn't exactly getting better because we are still having a lot of concerns about paying rent, (All that money we got from those baby showers? That's basically paying for us to live in the Bay area this month.) food, and our other bills. Christian's job is yielding less take-home pay than his previous job, and it isn't even winter.

So yeah, even with HypnoBabies helping my overall anxiety etc, I'm still a bit on edge because we just don't know what will happen. We still haven't finished paying the midwives (who have been incredibly gracious and understanding about our situation, thankfully!). We just got our insurance cards in the mail (and coverage!) through Cobra.

So I don't really feel like my blood pressure is too bad (or out of the range of normal) considering our situation. In fact, I think I'm doing pretty well.

All that said, clearly we still need thoughts, prayers, and extended feelers for better jobs for Christian (and purchases/ratings of my books! Purlease!). We'd love to stay in the Bay, but if something doesn't happen, we're going to have to move (and as much as I love my family, I'm not jumping up and down to live with them for however long as we get adjusted to life with a new baby).

So...send us positive vibes. Buy a copy of one of my books (and rate it everywhere you can!). Share suggestions about potential jobs for Christian. That's what we need. And hopefully diastolic blood pressure stays lower than 90.