Have I mentioned before that my practitioners are female? At the OB office, I have 2 regular female doctors and then there’s “The Big Guy” as I think of him. Dr. Reynolds. He always seemed mysterious (probably because I never met him) and the only thing I knew about him was that he would be delivering my son!
So…I was excited when I learned I would be meeting with him during my 4th visit.
What wasn’t so exciting was what happened to me just a few days before my appointment. We were at church the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving and before my appointment that week when I suddenly became very faintheaded during worship singing. I sat down quickly to try to overcome the “spell” I knew was coming on but it didn’t help. Within 30 seconds I started losing my hearing and my vision, I felt nauseated, and also lightheaded. I was on the verge of passing out! I went as quick as I could to the back hallways of the church.
Luckily I didn’t go completely out, but it really scared me. I’ve had “spells” like those before a few times in my life but not without a known trigger (smelling blood, getting too hot, etc.). This time it seemed like it came from nowhere.
Well – at my appointment a few days later you can be sure I had a lot going on my mind. Unfortunately, it was discovered during my routine blood pressure check that I didn’t have a lot going on in my BLOOD though! My blood pressure that day was 70 over 50. Doctor Reynolds (during our meeting!) laughed when he first looked at my chart and said that wasn’t enough to keep me from passing out. As you can imagine, I immediately launched into my experience the previous Sunday.
He calmed my fears somewhat by saying that low blood pressure in my case was a sign of a good, very strong connection between me and the baby. It’s just that sometimes the mother’s body is working so hard to take care of the baby that when confronted with the choice of traveling to the tip top of the mom’s head versus traveling a few inches over to the baby, it will more than likely choose the baby in those instances (and, thus, that’s when I pass out). He concluded that a combination of loss of fluids (I had diahrrea bad that week…eww) and low blood pressure is what made me pass out – and so I was taken off of my prenatals for a few days and instructed to get as much liquids in me as possible and get all “dried out” again. 
His final warning for me was to be careful driving places alone (in case another spell comes on)….
…and to keep my head away from church pews….just in case.
Related Posts
Tags: Appointment, Dr's Visits, Fears, Female Doctors, Low Blood Pressure, pregnancy, prenatal care, Routine Blood, Spells, Sunday Morning, thanksgiving
