Just as I was getting used to all my hopes and dreams being pinned on the magical day of January 20th, turns out the nurse at my clinic made a mistake in her voicemail yesterday, and I’m actually scheduled for a possible retrieval on January 25th, meaning the transfer would be closer to January 30th. Now, I should say that I do trust the staff at my clinic, but slip-ups like this kind of freak me out a bit. Note to self: Quadruple-check the label on the sperm sample before we hand it to the RE this cycle.
On a separate note, I went in this morning to learn how to administer all of these injections, which was kind of boring seeing as I’ve already figured out how to stab my own ass with PIO shots, thanks to some very helpful YouTube demos. But anyway, I had to do yet another patient intake and my blood pressure was off the charts. I sort of knew it would be, but it scared me nonetheless. Here’s the thing: Whenever nurses or doctors take my BP reading, they always seem to think the machine is broken — I guess because I’m young-ish, I’m not overweight, and the numbers that come up just seem inconceivably high. So they switch arms and take a second reading. Then they ask me to relax and stop talking and take a third reading, before finally sitting back and blinking their eyes in astonishment as they conclude, “Wow, you have really high blood pressure!” Note to medical staff: Letting your jaw drop right in front of me does not HELP with this condition!
My reading this morning was around 154/104. Yeah.
The (barely) reassuring thing is that by the time I got home and started working and took another reading with my own monitor, it was down to 135/95. And I just checked it again now, and the systolic has dropped so it’s 125/95 (proof is right here):
In the “yellow” range, according to my device.
Whenever I check it late at night, when I’m about to go to bed, it’s usually around 120/85, which is totally respectable. Still, I know this puts me at risk for pre-eclampsia if/when I do get knocked up, and I get somewhat panicked about this.
Do any of you guys have hypertension at all? What do you treat it with? I’m really curious to know just how bad it gets during pregnancy; I’ve heard it actually can go down initially because there’s more estrogen in your system, but eventually will start going up again as the baby gets bigger. Thoughts/advice?
Yeah, Science! 
I have hypertension! I haven’t ever gotten past 11 weeks in a pregnancy before but when I have been pregnant my blood pressure was lower. I was told I would be considered high risk though because of the possibility of developing pre-eclampsia.
Grr, I hate when they mix up the dates!! I hope everything is all set now for sure.
You will become a pro at injections really quickly! You’ll do great :)
Booo for high BP! Mine gets high during times of stress, but my doctors aren’t worried. They said to watch my sodium intake. Usually it gets lower in pregnancy, but you’ll have to watch it more towards the end.
Getting super pumped for you!! Woot! :)
Sorry, I’m no help. My BP borders on alarmingly low sometimes… Never high. But I can empathize with the disorganized clinic staff mixing up the dates. Stuff like that happened with us and one nurse in particular at our clinic when we were about to do our first and only IVF. Very frustrating, to say the least! I’m sure your BP will stabilize after this is all behind you and you are nice and knocked up;)
Are you into yoga at all? I bet it would help the stress level and probably the BP too! Among other things. Just a thought.
Oh, my gosh! My doctors have made so many mistakes. I tell my friends that the public library is more efficient. My work (medical device) would never be able to make those mistakes. There is too much quality assurance involved, we would be shut down. We are audited all the time. Why medical practices are not are FDA audited and need a quality assurance policy and department, is beyond me.