Pre-eclampsia is one of those pregnancy diseases that is good to know about but not good to worry about.  It usually occurs in first time pregnancies after 20 weeks.  The symptoms are vague but include high blood pressure, protein in urine and oedema.  It is not really known what causes it but it affects the health of the placenta and kidneys, lowering the oxygen in the blood and in extreme cases can result in death for both baby and mother.

I never had pre-eclampsia in any of my other pregnancies, so getting it at the end of this one was totally unexpected.  I went to my ultrasound appointment two days before my expected due date.  I had an intern for the appointment and he also has a student doctor from the university.  The intern looked over my charts, took my blood pressure and then chatted with me about how I was feeling during the week.  I told him I had a bad headache the day before and since then I have been feeling nauseous.  That morning I also began vomiting.  I shrugged it off and said ‘you know, pre-labour stuff.’

He checked the baby doing all the ultrasound measurements.  The last thing we got to see was the heart beat in the baby’s head.  Meanwhile, Moose was trying hard to entertain Lilu.  With a doctor’s glove pulled over his head, down over his nose, he began to blow up the glove into a chicken hat through his nose.  The pressure built up so much that the balloon blew off his head and flew around he room.  At this point I could not keep my tummy still for the poor intern.

The intern handed me a cup and wanted to test my urine.  He called up his supervisor to discuss the results. He turned to me and said ‘You have pre-eclampsia and we need to admit you to he hospital now so we can induce labour.’  Well, that was very unexpected, in deed.  My heart was racing and I wondered if Moose knew how serious this could become.  He didn’t until he doctor went into further details.  I begged the doctor to give me two hours to arrange an emergency babysitter and to get my hospital bag from home.  He wasn’t happy about it but he said ok.  He ran through some signs I should watch out for in the two hours so I know when I would need to drop everything and head straight to the hospital.  He said pre-eclampsia can turn for the worst very quickly.

I’d never been so aware or cautious of how I felt walking out of a hospital before.  Within two hours I had to collect myself and mentally prepare for an induced labour.