How do you check your BP?

[melissaa]

I have a digital BP monitor at home that Ive been told to monitor with about 3 times a day. I took it into the office the other day to check its accuracy and it was right dead on with the nurses reading. Today its been giving me some really odd readings and im not sure what to make of it. I was out rnningerrands with my son earlier and checked it when I got home and it was 119/58. I sat down with a snack and water and decided to check it again a while later b/c thats much lower than it had been. It was 128/79 which sounded about right. I sat here for about an hour resting and then started feeling really hot and the headache was getting worse so I rechecked it b/c I was curious and it was 128/110, I freaked out a bit and too the cuff off, sat for a minute and checked it again and got 115/68. Does it sound like my cuff is really messed up? Is it normal for it to vary so much in just like.. 2 hours without any difference in activity?

[caryn]

Test - I posted a reply twice that never appeared...

[caryn]

Huh. Oh well.

So anyway. It's not really connected to your activity level; it's connected to the ongoing negotiations between your immune system and the placenta over the amount of blood ferried to the placenta, and the available nutrients and oxygen in that blood. Your body wants to restrict this (possibly because the baby won't fit out, possibly because there's a hard metabolic limit to the rate at which your mitochondria can convert food and muscle tissue into energy) and the placenta always wants more than you want to send. In preeclampsia the negotiations have begun to break down.

When that happens pressures turn labile, and oscillate between extremes. So readings that swing rapidly are something we expect to see as symptoms progress.

If you take your pressures from the same arm more than once in several minutes - I want to say 10, but can't remember how many minutes exactly - then the residual compression from the first reading will create errors in the second reading. So don't do that.

Are you logging your pressures for your docs?

[melissaa]

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain that! I am logging the pressures for them to see, they've told me not to be concerned unless its consistently 140/90 though :/ Somewhat frustrating! It confuses me a little that my systolic and dyastolic numbers seem so far apart sometimes. Tonight my bp is coming up 121/92. Is that odd?

Im still experiening the horrible headaches daily though with visual spots and blurriness, as well as right shoulder blade pain off and on (at LEAST once or twice a day) and I ocassionally feel discomfort in the front as well. Im able to test my BP at home and do protein test strips too, but Im going to ask Thursday if they will re-test my labs anyway even if my pressure isnt high. Something just seems fishy to me and it makes me nervous. My protein strips at home are odd, Im not sure how to read them. They're mostly negative but always have a ring around the outer edge of anywhere from +1 to +3. Thanks agan for your reply!!