War Games... (or how we packed our hospital bag last night)
Ok, so maybe a better term for what I'm about to describe might be 'dress rehearsal' - but just as the military conducts war games in order to get ready for action, Kaniz and I went through a little simulation of our own last night.
During our most recent OB visit last Thursday, Dr. Pittini (who is fantastic, by the way) told Kaniz that her blood pressure was a little high and to keep an eye on it during the week. High blood pressure in pregnant women can be a symptom of a condition called pre-eclampsia which affects liver and kidney function. The condition is caused by the placenta, and the only known cure for pre-eclampsia is to deliver the placenta (and hence, the baby). So Kaniz went into a Shoppers Drug Mart yesterday afternoon to check her blood pressure and it was a lot higher than earlier in the week. We were obviously concerned about this, but thought that the higher numbers may be due to physical exertion or an inaccurate machine. So we went to my parents’ place in Brampton for dinner last night, and afterwards, decided to drop into another Shoppers location to check Kaniz’s blood pressure.. And again, it was higher than the afternoon reading. At this point, we started to get a little nervous and on Kaniz’s brother’s advice (who’s an MD), decided to stay put for 20 minutes and take a second reading. Sure enough, the anxiety we were both feeling didn’t help, and the number was higher still (around 185/110). At this point, we decided that we needed to go to the hospital. This was around 10pm or so.
Since Kaniz was feeling fine, we headed home first.. And while Kaniz was calling the Obstetrics triage at Women’s College (WC) and talking to the on-call doctor, I pulled up our ‘What to take to the hospital’ blog post (totally helpful!) and started packing.. In about 20 minutes, I had loaded up the car with our hospital bag, the camera and the car seat (which I hadn’t installed yet) and we were ready to hit the road.
Around 11:15pm or so, we made it to the triage desk at WC. The nursing staff was outstanding and had Kaniz settled into a bed fairly quickly. They set up a fetal monitor to see how +1 was doing and took Kaniz’s blood pressure, which was still high at around 165/110, so this initiated a bevy of urine and blood tests, all of which, thankfully, came back normal. During this time, a number of women in active labour came into triage, so we were treated to a fair amount of painful moaning (the anesthesiologist on call was busy with a C-section, so an epidural wasn’t immediately available to these women). This whole process took us to about 3am, and after a quick consultation with the on-call OB, Kaniz was moved to a private room for further observation. Her blood pressure at this point came down to around 140/80. The plan at this point was to run more blood tests at 6am and then keep Kaniz for another 24 hours for observation.
I was scheduled to leave for Chicago in a few hours, which I was expecting to cancel, but since things were looking good, Kaniz told me that I should go.. So after a bit of debate, I left WC around 4am. Meanwhile, Dr. Pittini visited Kaniz in the morning, and based on her blood pressure and blood work results from the morning, decided to let her go home.. So Kaniz is at home resting, and I’m in Chicago sitting in meetings – quite a whirlwind day!
Throughout the whole incident, I have to say that Kaniz was super calm and handled the situation really, really well. She was awesome!
In the end, it was a good ‘dry run’ for when the actual delivery does happen. It also helped us realize that we are about as ready as we’re ever going to be for this life changing experience.
Finally, another upshot of it all is that we got our hospital bag packed! Another thing off the list!
During our most recent OB visit last Thursday, Dr. Pittini (who is fantastic, by the way) told Kaniz that her blood pressure was a little high and to keep an eye on it during the week. High blood pressure in pregnant women can be a symptom of a condition called pre-eclampsia which affects liver and kidney function. The condition is caused by the placenta, and the only known cure for pre-eclampsia is to deliver the placenta (and hence, the baby). So Kaniz went into a Shoppers Drug Mart yesterday afternoon to check her blood pressure and it was a lot higher than earlier in the week. We were obviously concerned about this, but thought that the higher numbers may be due to physical exertion or an inaccurate machine. So we went to my parents’ place in Brampton for dinner last night, and afterwards, decided to drop into another Shoppers location to check Kaniz’s blood pressure.. And again, it was higher than the afternoon reading. At this point, we started to get a little nervous and on Kaniz’s brother’s advice (who’s an MD), decided to stay put for 20 minutes and take a second reading. Sure enough, the anxiety we were both feeling didn’t help, and the number was higher still (around 185/110). At this point, we decided that we needed to go to the hospital. This was around 10pm or so.
Since Kaniz was feeling fine, we headed home first.. And while Kaniz was calling the Obstetrics triage at Women’s College (WC) and talking to the on-call doctor, I pulled up our ‘What to take to the hospital’ blog post (totally helpful!) and started packing.. In about 20 minutes, I had loaded up the car with our hospital bag, the camera and the car seat (which I hadn’t installed yet) and we were ready to hit the road.
Around 11:15pm or so, we made it to the triage desk at WC. The nursing staff was outstanding and had Kaniz settled into a bed fairly quickly. They set up a fetal monitor to see how +1 was doing and took Kaniz’s blood pressure, which was still high at around 165/110, so this initiated a bevy of urine and blood tests, all of which, thankfully, came back normal. During this time, a number of women in active labour came into triage, so we were treated to a fair amount of painful moaning (the anesthesiologist on call was busy with a C-section, so an epidural wasn’t immediately available to these women). This whole process took us to about 3am, and after a quick consultation with the on-call OB, Kaniz was moved to a private room for further observation. Her blood pressure at this point came down to around 140/80. The plan at this point was to run more blood tests at 6am and then keep Kaniz for another 24 hours for observation.
I was scheduled to leave for Chicago in a few hours, which I was expecting to cancel, but since things were looking good, Kaniz told me that I should go.. So after a bit of debate, I left WC around 4am. Meanwhile, Dr. Pittini visited Kaniz in the morning, and based on her blood pressure and blood work results from the morning, decided to let her go home.. So Kaniz is at home resting, and I’m in Chicago sitting in meetings – quite a whirlwind day!
Throughout the whole incident, I have to say that Kaniz was super calm and handled the situation really, really well. She was awesome!
In the end, it was a good ‘dry run’ for when the actual delivery does happen. It also helped us realize that we are about as ready as we’re ever going to be for this life changing experience.
Finally, another upshot of it all is that we got our hospital bag packed! Another thing off the list!
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