Preeclampsia question

So super long explantation, but I hope it helps a little!

With preeclampsia, blood pressure problems are more of a symptom than the cause. Although it's not 100%, the current theory is when you have preeclampsia, your placenta implants incorrectly, and your whole body's blood vessels constrict.

This causes blood pressure to go up (usually,) but also your kidneys blood flow to constrict (causing poor function) and can lead to your platelets being damaged leaving you for increased risk of bleeding.

The actual diagnosis of preeclampsia is not blood pressure related, but when your protein to creatine (kidney level) is high. However, generally if evreything else is tightening up, your blood pressure goes up.

So although your blood pressure may have been higher than normal, and a cause to get further blood work done, it might not have been the main issue, or enough to put you on medication. At least inpatient, we consider 140/90 to be abnormally high, and 160/110 to be high enough we would give you emergent medication (due to concerns of a stroke).

They were most likely asking you to monitor your BP because they wanted to see if it got to the point you immediately needed treatment/needed started in BP meds.

Blood pressure increases can be slow, or very sudden. You may have been borderline at your first appointment, and by the time you were symptomatic, been having severe levels.

You did the 10000% absolute right thing by going in when you had that headache; it might have saved you and your baby's life.

When we treat the high blood pressure, it doesn't necessarily treat the disease process itself. The only true treatment of preeclampsia is getting your placenta out. And a placenta that is struggling is unfortunately not great for your baby either.

Since there's not a ton we can do for your baby when its inside, sometimes it makes more sense to get them out so we can help from the outside.

I've unfortunately seen a few SEVERE preeclampsia cases, where a patient had normal blood pressures the entire way though, but they were actively dying due to how low their platelets were. We've had to deliver before baby was viable due to risk to the mother.

As for your next pregnancies, having preeclampsia once does increase your risk, but plenty of people don't have issues again! Being a FTM increases your risk of preeclampsia. Other factors include having high blood pressure, being very young or over 35, diabetes, and as bs as it sounds, having a new father to the baby (something weird with new sperm causing an immune reaction).

Hope that helped a little. Preeclampsia is a very confusing process, and I hope you're provider is able to explain it a little more in depth :)

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