White Coat Hypertension Help!

[FunnyHazelPeer]

Has anyone got any advice on how to deal with white coat.

Have controlled hypertension with medication. On Friday I had reduced movements, went to triage. Movements were fine. However - I suffer from white coat, lo and behold BP was 156/87. It had been 130/72 at home that morning as I check daily.

I was then admitted to hospital for 48 hours due to this. My BP was up and down, however consistently normal when I was being woken up to do blood pressures - I presume this is because I didn’t have time to stress myself out.

Anyway I finally saw a consultant who listened and agreed it’s white coat.

I’m worried about when I go in to have baby as BP will be high again - any thing that helps anyone else with white coat?

The only thing I have found helped me is to ask not to take BP straight away and then before they do, do some breathing exercises a few mins before x

I had this with my first when I was in, and they gave me medication. Once baby was ready to come home the doctor agreed to let me leave with blood pressure medication, and that it would be monitored at home by midwife when they come and weigh baby etc. As soon as they did it at home the reading was fine and that was the end of it.

2nd pregnancy I made it really clear from the offset that I have white coat. They was often happy to walk out of the room and let me press the start button on the machine. Then depending on what kind of machine, it either stored the results or they got me to take a pic on my phone. I found this resulted in more acceptable readings for them!

This is me. I’m 35 weeks now with 4th baby and I have a consultant led pregnancy.

I take a blood pressure reading at home the morning of appointments and take a picture of it, I now very politely refuse to let them do it, I genuinely take it daily at home and this has been a problem with each pregnancy prior so I thought I’d stand up for myself a bit more this time.

It’s also documented in badger notes that I have White Coat Syndrome and they trust me to monitor my own blood pressure at home, they input the reading from my photograph into badger notes. I do have it really bad though, no idea why 🙈

You sound very similar to me! I find my consultant and community midwife appts are fine and they listen to at home readings.

triage is a different story though - really didn’t listen to the @ home readings. Then I was becoming more worked up and it reached quite the high so I got admitted! Soooooo frustrating. Luckily saw a great consultant after 48hrs who was happy to release me!

just worried about it happening again AND after birth them not letting me go due to it being high. I know some people after a while in hospital settings can get it to come down, I feel like mine is worse the longer I’m there. It’s like my brain is stressing me out saying “IT NEEDS TO BE LOW OTHERWISE YOU’LL STAY FOREVER”

This last paragraph was me with my first. They was taking it what felt like forever, and the more they did it the worse it got (over about 3 days). I could feel myself getting worked up as I would never get it down and would be stuck forever. This is when I said I’m going to discharge myself if you won’t let me out. That’s when they spoke to the doctor who agreed I could go with a 10 day course of blood pressure meds, and it could be monitored at home.

So I guess my advise is you won’t be stuck forever. As easy as it is for me to say, try not to get too stressed and worked up. You will get home and then you can enjoy your baby!

Breathe deeply in and out slowly while they are taking it. Ask for it to be done a few times as it'll always come down after the first one. Ask them not to tell you numbers until they've done all 3 measurements. Ask for a bigger cuff as the standard one is quite small. Ask them to use a manual machine rather than electronic as its more accurate. Machines read higher and are not as accurate. Had hypertension at end of first pregnancy and it honestly gave me some kind of PTSD around having my BP taken. Pregnant for 2nd time and got the flu and admitted at 20 weeks and ended up on meds as it wouldn't come down. I was genuinely panicking though that I had preeclampsia at 20 weeks. Since then ive done all of the above and my bp went too low so was allowed stop the meds as doctor agreed it was white coat and probably the effects of the flu. It's been in the 110s/70s since but onky using those tips above! Hopefully it'll stay that way.

@ThatAmpleJadeHelper the cuff size is determined by the arm size - if you use one that's bigger than it needs to be it will affect the reading inappropriately.

Automated BP machines are accurate - they measure BP differently to using a manual sphyg but they are accurate for people who are in a normal heart rhythm. Most people are so out of practice at doing manual BPs these days that you'd probably end up with entirely fictional numbers.