Hi there everyone 👋🏽

Please bare with me as this is going to be quite a long topic.

06/26/2023 I went to the emergency room as I was having UTI symptoms that I was afraid had spread to my kidneys. Long story short, it hadn’t. But I definitely had a UTI. Was given antibiotics and sent on my way.

06/30/2023 I returned to the emergency room, due to extreme pelvic pain. I have PCOS and it felt similar to a cyst, but I wasn’t sure bcus I haven’t had one of those since I was like 14-17. I’m now 22 almost 23. Ultrasound revealed I did in fact have a cyst on my left ovary, as well as a dominant follicle and additional follicles on the right. Here’s where things get weird.

As I was returning back to my room awaiting the ultrasound results, I noticed two nurses in my room hunched over the sink talking about something and pointing at it. As I got closer, I could hear them saying something about “she didn’t tell any of us that. I’m going to ask her”. As I get into my room, one of the nurses ask, “are you pregnant?”. And I told her not that I was aware of. I had just had my second child via c section a year ago. She proceeds to tell me that my pregnancy test (urine) had come back positive with a faint line, so they were going to do another one. They do the second one, positive again. So they tell the dr that was on my case and he says he’s going to run some bloodwork, but tells them to run one more just in case. The nurse tells me that that one came back negative and then she leaves and apologized for “making me worry”. But then the dr comes back in a couple of minutes later and says “oh no, that one’s positive too. Let’s wait to see what your blood work shows”.

About two hours later, the dr comes back in and tells me that my blood test also came back pregnant with an hcg level of 41. I explain to him, there’s no way I could be pregnant as I had just had a period literally 15 days before this test and 4 days ago when I was in the emergency room, that test was negative. He explains to me that if that’s the case, it’s probably to early to tell as my ultrasound didn’t show any signs of pregnancy either. But that I should get my levels rechecked to see if they double, or if they slowly rise or drop. As this could be indicative of ectopic, or early miscarriage or just a really early pregnancy. And they discharge me with pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy and left ovarian cysts paperwork.

Fast forward to today, 07/03/2023. I called my PCP and they got me in today to do a repeat pregnancy test and bloodwork. I most likely won’t receive those results until tomorrow afternoon. My dr goes on to tell me that it’s possible I’m just very early and the tests picked it up early. As if I was ectopic, they would have seen something. Even the littlest of something. He asked if I had any bleeding or pelvic pain I told him no. He told me to come back in two days and we’ll do a repeat test of my levels after we receive the results from today.

But here’s where I’m heartbroken and so conflicted. Ever since giving birth to my second child in July of last year, I’ve been suffering from hypertension. My blood pressure is always 140/90’s. Or sometimes even higher. And I haven’t been started on medication bcus I suffered horribly from postpartum anxiety. Having panic attacks multiple times daily. Even having to go to the hospital and being diagnosed with borderline postpartum psychosis bcus I also was not sleeping. So they told me that they believed my high blood pressure was just due to “white coat hypertension”. I’ve tried to change somethings in my lifestyle like drinking more water, trying to lose weight and trying to take control of my anxiety whenever I went into the dr so my blood pressure would lower itself and it actually worked at my last appointment. Although elevated, my blood pressure was 135/87. But today when I went back in, it was back up at 144/91. I hear so many horror stories about what can happen with high blood pressure during pregnancy, and I am afraid of something happening to myself or this baby bcus of this. And I’ve been considering abortion. I’ve always been pro-choice, but now I’m stuck in this position where I really feel like maybe I need to consider this choice to avoid serious complications during this pregnancy. And it’s tearing me apart as I have two boys, and I’m really hoping this will be my girl. As this baby would be our last if I decided to keep it.

I had an appointment today with the nurse practitioner also, to get a blood pressure cuff to take home, to monitor it but my dr had to cancel it bcus my insurance would not allow me to have two appointments in one day. So I’m stuck waiting for the next appointment to see if my high bp is related to my anxiety, or if I seriously have an issue with it. As well as my heart rate. It’s always above 100 or high 90’s.

My question is, has anyone ever gone through this and can shed some light on how/if you got through it? How was your pregnancy with chronic hypertension and did you have serious complications? Or is it best that I maybe just go ahead and schedule an appointment for an abortion?

Like I’ve said I’ve always been pro choice, but for me personally, I’ve never saw myself terminating a pregnancy. But now that im here and fearful for my life and this baby’s, idk what else to do.

I was thinking about just waiting until my first actual OB appointment to see what my dr would reccommend, but I figured I’d write here as well to see if I could get any other opinions.

If you’ve read this far, thank you so much. And if you offer any advice, thank you as well. Im really struggling mentally as this is something I wanted, but not for a couple more years as I was hoping to get my blood pressure under control before having another baby, and I also wanted my boys to be a little older before this.

Edit: I also wanted to add that at the hospital my blood pressure readings were 144/91, 143/98 and then finally somewhat normal, 133/77. I haven’t had that type of reading in months.