So, initially they just they checked my urine, they put a cannula in and took some bloods, and they do kind of blood pressures ten minutes apart; so you get three blood pressures, then they get you an average blood pressure over that time just so you’sve got an idea of whether it’s fluctuating or whether it’s true high blood pressure and it remains high. So, I think my average was 200 over a 120. So, they couldn’st give me labetalol which is the drug that they regularly use round here. To drop your blood pressure, because I was asthmatic.

And I have had a few asthma attacks, so I think if you’sve got minor asthma you can have Labetalol, but not how severe mine is. So they gave me Adalat retard so some nifedipine, and I had I think I had two or maybe three lots of dose, and in that time my blood pressure went higher.

So, it wasn’st actually doing anything. So, my mum lives in [city] about ten minutes away from the hospital, so I’d phoned once I’d got in there, but by the time that she arrived I was already up on labour ward because they just my blood pressure was just wasn’st going down how they thought it should be. And the next drug they had to give me was an IV drug that they have to monitor me on so yeah.

The CTG (Cardiotocography), for it seemed like hours and hours and hours, and there were some very drastic decelerations, and I’d have doctors come and go and come and go and come and go, and say you know, “We may have to deliver,” and ah I’m trying to think of the actual process because this was all going on from about eight or nine at night till, you know till the early hours of the next morning. So there was some were saying it was OK and others were saying, “Well we’re going to have to deliver.” But and then was an issue of the fact that there was nothere were no operating theatres available you know, so I was kind I felt that it really did feel that night that we were up against it. And I had a Doppler scan and there was a real clear sound of the dip in the heartbeat going much, much slower, and so I’d also only just, a few hours beforehand, had the injection for thinning my blood, so they said, “Well we can’t do anything until, you know until you get over that anyway; until your blood starts to thicken up again.” So, anyway this all went on for, you know most of the night until about four in the morning where they rushed me, or I rushed, I ran, to a into an operating theatre and he was yeah he was delivered in about four minutes.

I went in at 26 weeks. I had what did they do? Urine test to see what was in there. They done blood pressure and they managed the baby’s movements and baby’s heartbeat. When I went in at 32 weeks they said my blood pressure was through the roof. At one point it went to 205 over 130. So, as soon as I went in it was steroids for the baby and then I had to take two lots of pills straight away. Blood pressure was being taken every two minutes that wasn’st bringing it down, so they tried something else and then there are a lot of pills. Again that wasn’st bringing it down so they tried IVs; I was just having bloods like look at my arms and it was just bruises all down my arms where they were just sticking stuff in, pulling blood out to try and find out try and make sure it was coming down.

And then again through all this baby was being monitored. Eventually they managed to get the IVs and it had come down, stayed stable overnight. Had another lot of steroids then for her and they were just like, “Look now you’sve had your steroids.” I wasn’st outputting any water; I had to drink 85 mls of water every hour. I was lucky to output 20 [mls]. So they knew my kidneys and everything else were, aren’t-, failing. And then they were like, “No, you need to get we need to have this baby out because although your blood pressure it’s not just that that’s the issue, it’s everything else that’s coming with it now as well.”

To give her more of a chance, to keep her in as long as we possibly could. To be born at 34 weeks is, you know it had to be done, it had to be done, but yeah if we could have kept her in longer everything gives her at 34 weeks there’s that teetering point isn’t it where her lungs and her developmental things, it’s everything happens so quickly then. Yeah it was to try and keep her safe and give her the growing time if she needed it. By that point as well they’d given her steroids, so it was a case of I knew that, at least the 24 to 48 hour period to give the steroids the chance to, to really work.

I was in for the week that week. So, 37+5 to 38+5 I was in. And every day I was saying, “So, what are you going to do with me?” and they said, “We’re just going to monitor you.” I was like, “OK.” One of the consultants came round and he was like, “Most of the women in this hospital are because of pre-eclampsia, you know everybody on this ward right now, they’re only here because of pre-eclampsia,” and I was like, “Oh right OK,” and he’s like, “That’s what you’sve got,” and I know, you know I know [laughs]; I diagnosed that myself months, you know months ago, I know I’ve got pre-eclampsia. And he said, “Yeah, that’s pretty much all we can do to make sure you don’st do anything.” He was like, you know “We don’st want you going further than the bathroom; we just want you to stay still, don’st move and just wait to go into labour,” and I was like, “Oh right OK.” I had responded to lying still; my blood pressure came right down I think it was around a 133 it stayed high for a couple of days and then it came down to about a 133 and this was at 38+5, and he said, “You can go home if you want today.” I said, “OK yeah, I’ll go home now,” and I said, “Do I just continue bedrest?” He said, “Yeah, bed rest until you deliver.” Alright fine.

I was in a ward; I was there was one time I was in a postnatal ward and there’s obviously mums there whose had a baby, with their babies. And I don’st think it’s a good experience for parents who are scared that their baby come out early or might be well, mixed with mums whose had a well baby, healthy baby and thinking, ‘That might not happen to me.

Or being mixed with mums whose in labour and shouting and screaming and it wasthat wasI think that terrified me having a normal delivery.

I heard all the swear words and all the screaming and shouting and I thought, ‘I don’st want that,’ yeah.

The risks – my blood pressure was actually fine, but the pre-eclampsia – what they thought was pre-eclampsia starting was in the, was the protein in my urine, which had reached four, which is apparently incredibly high. All these things you discover. And he said, “I want you to go home and be back by 3.30 to book – you know, to – and you’re not going anywhere, and we’ll see how you are when we deliver the baby. So gone were all thoughts of how I’m going to have this baby. I was sort of, “Oh my God, the nursery’s not ready. I haven’t bought the sheets and” you know. So I go home and teach my husband how to work the washing machine.

Was he with you?

Yes. Which was actually not – because we went so often, and he works, you know, a reasonable distance away, he was with me because we thought we were going to go and see an anaesthetist and things, whereas a lot of them I’d been to on my own, or my mum had taken me to a couple, and you know. So that was a fluke, really. And we went out and had a nice lunch, came home, packed, and in I went and cried my eyes out. But the reason they were worried about the pre-eclampsia – I missed that bit – was because pre-eclampsia can trigger seizures. And that is the, that is what happens, if it gets very, very bad. And with my tendency to seizures anyway, they were worried about the two, which was why the professor said, “You’re staying in”, and the registrar had thought we might think about it for a while. And so I arrive, and they can’t put you in a room on your own, which a lot of the, you know, people on this special floor were in, because I might have a seizure. So you can never be on your own, so you have to be in a ward with four of you. So, which, you know, is fine, but I was distraught, just beside myself. And it was horrible in there, just ghastly. And it was sweltering, absolutely sweltering. And we were – the one godsend was that the hospital has beautiful gardens, and every night my husband came with dinner. So he’d go to work, come home, cook dinner, put it in the car and bring it up, and we’d have a picnic every night.