White coats at every maternity appointment

[Daisysandviolets]

With my daughter, I kept getting white coats which meant I kept getting stuck in hospital for hours on my own (in covid times). So now I'm pregnant with DC2 I panic every time I have a midwife appointment I had my first booking appointment today and I didn't know they were going to take it so when they did I just panicked and cried and ended up with a reading of 153/88! Luckily thsi midwife let me take a reading when I got home which was 113/82. Just didn't know if anyone else struggled with this or had any tips for coping with it?

Buy a home monitor and test your BP daily

So I have this. Will you be seeing the same midwife at each appointment? What worked for me was asking her to take it towards the end of the appointment. It gave me a chance to relax a little and not be rushed. I also found that not being asked questions etc whilst it is being done helps...talking increases BP and so I'd get even higher readings with people asking me things. I would do long and slow breathing too. I have a home monitor and would take it once every few days so I was satisfied that it was still normal and I hadn't actually developed high BP.

Aww sorry OP. I had a situation a bit like this at the end of my last pregnancy and it was crap. So many lovely afternoons that could have been spent enjoying my last bit of time just with my first were instead wasted in hospital rooms waiting for consultants. Better safe than sorry and all that but looking back I think they were doing some excessively defensive doctoring. Anyway, I’d agree with PP about a home monitor for reassurance. Definitely do not talk while having it done, don’t cross your legs, make sure your bladder isn’t full, and maybe try some relaxation exercises eg deep breathing and visualisation. Good luck x

Thanks ladies ❤️ I bought at home monitor yesterday and I'm going to try and take it daily! Someone also said about reciting a song in my head while they take it so I guess that's worth a bash!

Mine goes ridiculously high at my consultant appointments. They know it’s because I have white coats and I test at home to make sure it’s low normally. It happened at my last midwife appointment too and she’s asked me to take it myself at home before I see her 🤣

Can they take it manually? After a bad experience in my first labour the electric ones make my bp shoot through the roof 16 years later still.

The manual machine always gives me lowner readings, plus I can't actually see the figures which helps. They always do it multiple times too and take the lower readings.

Great that you have a home machine too

Obviously not related to pregnancy but my partner has this and it caused us huge stress as he was waiting on tests for a genetic condition which one of the signs of is high bp.

He took his blood pressure 3x a day at home and kept a record of his readings to show doctor. When he got it checked once at doctors nurse turned away to do paperwork and let him do it himself and it wasn’t as high

My DH gets this, he checks his at home regularly especially when he knows they are going to check it. He's had to get quite vocal about it otherwise he'd miss theatre slots etc while they retested etc. Now he tells them what his readings were before he got there, and that waiting to retest means the readings will just go up! I don't know if it helps but he avoids caffeine beforehand. I think they got him to lie down last time, that helps apparently.

I had exactly this and during covid as well last year. I kept getting readings of 150/100 and it turned out it was the wrong size cuff on the manual one my midwife was using. Every time I went into hospital it was 120/70, however towards the end of pregnancy it stayed high even in the hospital so I was sort of glad they were aware of that.

I really feel for you, I don’t know if maybe you can ask the midwife to try a different cuff and see if it’s the size that might be contributing to it.

I have this too, I find lots of deep breaths help a little and taking the reading at the end of the appointment x

This seems to be a new expression that I've never heard of.

@eddiemairswife I call it white coat syndrome

I have this too, ended up in triage after every single midwife appointment with my first, now 34 weeks with my second and only been up once so far. What's helping for me is getting to my appointments at least 15 mins early and sitting in my car with a book and some music to chill out a bit x

@eddiemairswife

This seems to be a new expression that I've never heard of.

I call it white coat hypertension I have it too and when I was pregnant I had to have a 24 hour ambulatory monitor so it could track my blood pressure at home. It was fine at home