37 Week Appointment

Today Jim and I went to my thirty-seven week appointment. It was super stressful from the get-go. When the nurse opened the door to call my name she couldn’t even get out “Melissa” then she tried at my last name which just ended up being an “Aaaa–Tttt” sound. Irritated. We walk through the door and she seemed flustered, and told me to get on the scale. As we all know I hate the scale because I haven’t been eating that much but the pounds are packing on like I am an underweight wrestler. I step on the scale and the freaking numbers read 193. WTF!? HOW is this possible? Six pounds in one stinkin‘ week. No way. Even more irritated. We go into the room and another nurse follows the short in capable one. She explains how she is observing the other because she is training and coming from El Cajon (add that to the list). She tells me how she is going to take my blood pressure, great. I start laughing at Jim because he could already tell that it was going to be high when I threw my purse down before I did my urine test. Anyway, she takes my blood pressure and it was 135/98. Extremely high. The nurses start bickering about the way the one is inputting my information and the one tells her to re-take my BP. This time it was 127/89. Better but not great. The nurses finally leave and I am so over it that the only thing making me smile was Jim making fun of all the newborn announcements that adorned the wall. The ever so lovely Betty comes walking through the door, checks the fundal height (right at 37 weeks) and asks if they did an u/s last week. No. She tells me that since my BP was super high that I will now be on modified bed rest and that she was sending me down to have NST screenings done twice a week until baby girl comes. Great. Appointment over, thank golly. We head down the hall to be greeted by Shari, another fun lady like Betty which was calming me already. She explains the test and what I should expect every time I go in to see her. First, she did an u/s to check P’s fluid, fantastic! She is in the correct position for her week, laying on the right side, face down and her head is in position. I was then moved to another bed where she monitored the baby for 20 minutes to check for contractions, her heartbeat and my blood pressure. She laughed because she always tells the doctors and the nurses to check pregnant weight after they take our blood pressure, not before, but she said they never listen. So she summed it up that my heightened blood pressure was most likely due to me being upset over my ever so high weight gain. We summed it up that it was the incompetent nurses fault.