by caryn » Thu Aug 30, 2012 08:35 am
Welcome! And yes, you are indeed waiting for the ball to drop. This condition is a sign that your body and the placenta/s are not tolerating each other well, and when that turns into an outright biochemical fight, things get messy quick.
What will probably happen is that they'll try to manage your symptoms with blood pressure medication and close monitoring, to make sure you're able to safely stay pregnant and to make sure the kiddos are still getting good blood flow. You'll maybe get steroid shots to mature their lungs more quickly, depending on how quickly you're progressing. They'll draw bloodwork routinely to check your liver and kidney function, monitor your bp frequently, and use fetal monitoring to watch heart traces. BPPs/NSTs start to be performed regularly as well.
It's called "severe preeclampsia" once you start ringing in pressures above 160/100, or proteinuria above 5000 mg, or develop a severe headache, visual disturbances, kidney failure, elevated liver enzymes, or a host of other issues. At that point management becomes much more of an hour-to-hour thing.
Some women can crawl along for weeks with this condition; others have to deliver within hours. After 34 weeks they'd be much more likely to deliver you because at that point the vast majority of babies do very well indeed with easy NICU stays, but before that point they'll try to push things to gain extra days for gestational development.
We probably have at least a few other hospital bedresters around at any given time, though perhaps just lurking - I hope some will post shortly. Welcome again!
Welcome! And yes, you are indeed waiting for the ball to drop. This condition is a sign that your body and the placenta/s are not tolerating each other well, and when that turns into an outright biochemical fight, things get messy quick.
What will probably happen is that they'll try to manage your symptoms with blood pressure medication and close monitoring, to make sure you're able to safely stay pregnant and to make sure the kiddos are still getting good blood flow. You'll maybe get steroid shots to mature their lungs more quickly, depending on how quickly you're progressing. They'll draw bloodwork routinely to check your liver and kidney function, monitor your bp frequently, and use fetal monitoring to watch heart traces. BPPs/NSTs start to be performed regularly as well.
It's called "severe preeclampsia" once you start ringing in pressures above 160/100, or proteinuria above 5000 mg, or develop a severe headache, visual disturbances, kidney failure, elevated liver enzymes, or a host of other issues. At that point management becomes much more of an hour-to-hour thing.
Some women can crawl along for weeks with this condition; others have to deliver within hours. After 34 weeks they'd be much more likely to deliver you because at that point the vast majority of babies do very well indeed with easy NICU stays, but before that point they'll try to push things to gain extra days for gestational development.
We probably have at least a few other hospital bedresters around at any given time, though perhaps just lurking - I hope some will post shortly. Welcome again!
