Damn You, Blood Pressure!

Dearest Harper,

It looks like you might be coming to us sooner rather than later, a thought that both excites and terrifies me. I'm excited for obvious reasons - I absolutely cannot wait to meet you, see what you look like, hold you in my arms, give you kisses, and have you meet everyone who loves you so much already. I'm terrified because life as I know it is going to dramatically change, which I've had 36 weeks to prepare for, but I'm not sure I can ever really prepare myself until it happens. I just want nothing more than to do the best by you. You deserve nothing less.

My blood pressures are borderline high. My feet and my hands are swollen, and I occasionally have mild headaches. I had a set of labs drawn yesterday, and they were completely normal, which is awesome, so right now I'm just diagnosed with gestational hypertension and not pre-ecclampsia. Since nobody is entirely sure why this happens to some women, there was nothing I could have done to prevent it, and nothing I can do to fix it.

At the appointment with my doctor today we discussed all of this and made a plan. I'll monitor my blood pressures until my appointment next week. If they stay just borderline high and don't start getting crazy high, we'll do another set of labs to see if the pre-ecclampsia is developing or not. If it's not, we'll likely induce you the week of the 13th (once my doctor gets back into town) with the logic that it's best to get you out while everything's ok and not give anything bad a chance to develop. You'll be solidly in your 37th week at that point, so there are no worries about your health.

Daddy is worried about us, but luckily I'm a labor and delivery nurse and know what to look for to see if things are headed in a bad direction. I promised him tonight that I wouldn't let it get to a bad place - I love him too much to risk taking you and me away from him, and I love you too much to not be here for you. At this stage of the pregnancy, it would be silly not to do what needs to be done to assure we're both safe and healthy. We'll be ok, Harper, I promise.

So, maybe I'll see you in less than 2 weeks...

I love you,

Mommy