8:30 AM
Coming home at three in the morning from a New Year’s Eve party hosted by one of our Filipino family friends in their home, I woke up pretty early at 830 AM. Ever since I had been on maternity leave, I’ve been waking up at this time, at the very least, as opposed to the 530 AM or 630 AM that I was used to. Still, to wake up at 830 AM in New Year’s Day is too damn early. Anyway, I know I had to. I’ve learned my lesson. Chores will just pile up if I do not attend to them immediately.
I had been active all throughout my pregnancy. I walked a lot, moved a lot and even did prenatal yoga from 14 weeks gestation but since my belly was already heavy at 37 weeks, I was then having a harder time moving around. I remembered waking up that day to a pile of unwashed dishes in the sink. However, washing dishes is such a breeze that my pregnant self was able to finish them in record time. After which, I moved on to organizing our pantry.
10:45 AM
Before I moved on to my next task, I caught my breath first and sat beside Aaron on the sofa. While I was resting, I felt an urgent need to go to the toilet to take a big wee. No biggie, this has been happening quite a lot lately: feeling a full bladder only to find out that I do not have that much pee to dispose of. It’s just the weight of the baby putting pressure on to my bladder.
When I went to the restroom, I discovered that I was bleeding. It was not mucous-like with a tinge of blood like what I was expecting a “show” to be but a period-like bleed. Recounting things that I’ve read and were told to watch out for, I panicked. I remembered that any vaginal bleeding during the third trimester is something that would fall as an emergency situation. I immediately called on Aaron and asked him to ring up the hospital. He said that I should do it so that I could explain it better and just handed me the phone. I explained the situation to the midwife, the midwife whom I was able to talk with on the phone asked us to come to the hospital and come straight to the emergency department and within minutes after I placed the call, we were already on our way to the hospital.
11:30 AM
On the way, I found myself singing along with the song playing on the car radio. I was trying to distract myself and to not panic. “Is there something wrong?”, “Is this it?”, “Why isn’t there any mucous plug?”. I had a lot of questions that warranted some answers!
11:50 AM
As we arrived in the hospital, Aaron dropped me off in front of the emergency department and went on to find a parking slot. I approached the midwife on-duty and she asked me to take a seat as they prepare the paperworks for me to sign. I was still waiting when Aaron arrived minutes later. After a while, the midwife again called my name, I signed some papers and she asked me to sit first and wait for her to come out. The automatic sliding door on the right of the receiving area opened and I followed the midwife as she led me to a nearby room that has some equipment. She asked me to lie down while she take my blood pressure. My BP registered to be high at 180/85. I have not gotten a reading that high ever in my life! The highest that I got prior that is 130/85 and that already made me nervous and my OB wary that she asked me to come back a week later so that she could monitor it.
The midwife checked my BP again hoping that it would register a different reading but it did not budge. She asked me if I was having any blurry visions, headache or if my rib area hurts. I was not feeling any of them so I told her no. She told me to wait so that she could get the manual BP monitor and verify the reading that she got. I became more nervous. I knew it would be higher because I was still nervous about the bleeding and seeing my BP shoot up that high made me even more anxious! She came back with the manual monitor in tow and measured my BP again. It became higher. That was when she decided to admit me and put me in one of the birthing suites.
12:30 PM
At the birthing suite, my midwife, Cara, asked me to collect for her some urine samples so that they could check the protein levels of my urine. She also took some blood samples. After getting all the samples that they needed, it just became a waiting game for us. Though my BP had already lowered down after a few hours of staying at the birthing suite, it was still high at 150/85. With this, Cara explained to me the possibility for an induction the next few days. Sometimes, pregnant women will have a high BP due to reasons that are unknown and before the BP can even have a chance to increase to an uncontrollable reading, they do suggest to induce the labour. Though I told Cara and the doctor that I was amenable to it, the doctor told me that I do not have to decide yet since we are still waiting for the results of my tests.
The result of my urine test came back pretty quickly while my blood tests follow suit. The results were all good but since my BP has to still be monitored I was transferred to the maternal ward and asked to stay for the night.