So, we had another appointment today. I've been feeling pretty poorly this week, with my ankles swelling to marshmallow-like proportions, and seeing spangly lights when I turn my head, and feeling dizzy. I almost went in on Wednesday, but I knew I had the appointment today so decided to hold off.

Well, the midwife checked my blood pressure and it was ridiculously high. Think 150ish over 80ish. Yeah, not bueno. The midwife said, "Oh, they'll probably induce you today with a reading like that." Alright then! Matt and I started making plans for how he'd get a day bus pass, leave me at the hospital, go home and clean, etc.

So they sent me over to the assessment unit for a blood pressure check (where they do 3 or 4 readings ten minutes apart). I sat in their waiting room for about 30 minutes, then they ushered me into a room where a student midwife attended to me.

Now, one might think that since I myself am a student I would be more forgiving of other students. In fact, kind of the opposite is true. I *know* how incompetent we students are. This midwife put a blood pressure cuff on me that was WAY too loose. Like, I could easily put 4 fingers between it and my skin and it kept sliding off my arm. The first time it took a reading, it said my pulse was 42. It also said my pressure was 120/67. Um, what? I let her come in and check on me once, but the second time I basically had to say, "Look. Just put a smaller cuff on me. This is not giving accurate readings." She put the smaller cuff on and was amazed to see my blood pressure rise to 141/72. Sigh. This is why, when I have the baby, I am more than willing to let students watch, but only a trained professional will be doing important things on me.

Anyway, my BP stayed at about 140ish over 70ish for the rest of the time we were there. When I walked back over to see the doctor, she was basically unimpressed with my BP and suggested I come back in next Friday for a recheck. I explained to her that my BP was now 35-40/15-20 over my normal status, but she seemed to be of the camp of people to whom absolute numbers mean more than, you know, patients. She actually suggested that my symptoms (pitting edema, headache, seeing lights, etc.) were both "not that bad" and could not possibly be caused by my pressure since it was still in an okay range.

While I had a quiet panic attack, Matt stepped in and said "What we're trying to say is that she's at 39 weeks. Why aren't you just inducing her?" The doctor got a bit flustered at this, and said something that sounded a bit like "Well, if we induced her we'd have to start inducing every woman at 39 weeks with high blood pressure." We both leaned a bit on her at this point (i.e., "If I was in the States they'd have induced me last week", which is almost certainly true), so she went to speak with the head consultant about "a care plan" for me. This probably meant she walked over to him to commiserate about the hysterical American woman over in room 11c. Miraculously, she came back in and said that, even though they never do this, they'd schedule an induction for the day after my due date instead of for 12 days after, when they normally schedule it. Also, I go back into day assessment on Monday for another BP panel.

Basically, I'll have a child a week from Tuesday pretty much no matter what. I'm still hoping that he gets here, well, tonight. Or earlier. But since I'm still only having contractions about once an hour or so, I'm not holding out too much hope.