High Blood pressure

[chocolateandtea123]

Hi everyone.

I'm 21 weeks but since 16 weeks I've had high blood pressure which resulted in a hospital admission. I get extremely anxious and worried before appointments so my blood pressure is always high aswell as my heart rate. Ive come for a hospital appointment and it seems like I'm going to be spending the night in hospital. I am absolutely terrified. Has anyone else been through this???

Hi @chocolateandtea123 , I had my son three weeks ago and had high blood pressure in my pregnancy and also for two weeks postpartum until my hormones settled back down.

Sorry to hear you are going through this stress. Although the hospital stays are really annoying, think positively that they are taking it seriously and keeping an eye on you. I felt my hospital and triage didn't really and when postpartum I was discharged and my medication wasn't controlling it at all, it was stressful not being clear how to manage it so it sounds like yours are far more on the ball. How high have your readings been?

My last reading was 150/100. I've been given a bp machine to measure at home. This makes me even more anxious because I know my readings will be high, I can't help getting myself worked up about it

Have they put you on medication as well? Mine were around that high too and actually postpartum a bottom reading under 110 was good for me, which was bad. Try and view it as the fact they are monitoring so closely is relaxing in itself as they will spot any jumps and change your meds accordingly. I do really sympathise as I found the whole home monitoring process incredibly stressful and no doubt made it worse. Although it feels far away, there is an end though. My BP fell off a cliff exactly two weeks postpartum but at the time I never felt like it would resolve itself. Sending love.

Anxiety won't be the entire reason for this though, especially if you're now monitoring it yourself at home and it's still high. Sounds like chronic hypertension to me. Look up the nice guideline on how it's treated in pregnancy.

Ask them to do best of 3 of bp checks over half an hour or an hour, depending on how much time you have. White coat syndrome and anxiety, it gave me constant high readings after ptsd due to birth trauma with no existing or underlying hypertension.

I had to go to a & e last night for something unrelated and I didn't feel as stressed as I normally do in hospitals. I was more in pain so focused on that. My BP was 136/86. They said it's still raised but I definitely think anxiety plays a big part. I'm glad I'm being so closely monitored now so it can be treated. Feeling a bit less anxious about it today

Yes. High blood pressure can be because of the anxiety itself.
Because doctors consider rare scenarios and want everything to go smoothly, they take really extra precautions which normally they might not.

I ended up developing both high blood pressure as well as diabetes and was put on meds for both. I managed to taper off both of them after pregnancy. My sugar levels are fine now. But my BP levels still fluctuated. And had to end up going back on bp meds. For some people though, high BP and Hr can be because of anxiety, and in that case lifestyle changes or meds might help. I was already on antidepressants and still my levels fluctuated so it made sense to take meds.
All in all nothing to worry majorly

Ask them for 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring - they attach it to you, you go home and carry on with your normal life - that will give a much clearer indication of what your blood pressure is doing as it's really common to get high readings when you're monitoring yourself as your anxiety goes up.

I have chronic hypertension that developed postnatally and am now on three medications for the rest of my life as well as under cardiology for some mild heart problems that have developed, due to the high blood pressure damaging it. It's best to get it under control ASAP. My cardiologist has said I need excellent blood pressure which for me needs to be 125/75, I am still not there yet even with meds!

Hey. So I've been measuring my blood pressure everyday at home since being at the hospital and they can confirm it's mainly down to anxiety. At home I'm getting consistent readings of 110/75. So not too bad. They are still keeping a close eye on me though

That's pretty much text book young adult. Nothing to worry about there.