100/60 & The Gigantic Uterus

I threw up in the trash can at my desk on Tuesday and that was the last straw. At 15 weeks, I was three weeks over an imaginary date I'd set for myself as a deadline by which I could expect to feel better. Throwing up in your waste basket at work is undignified when you sit alone in an office, but humiliating when you work in a cube in a room of seven. 

I decided to call my nurse. 

Not knowing what to say, and feeling like perhaps I was just not being tough enough I began,

"I feel like crap...I mean I expected to feel like crap in my first trimester, but I don't feel better. I might even feel worse. Or maybe I just feel pregnant. I don't know, I just thought I would call in case anything seemed off to you." I walked Claudia through my dizziness, nausea, vomiting, lethargy, feeling faint, and cold sweats and she promptly advised me to come in for a visit with Dr. Park as my doc was unavailable.

Dr. Park diagnosed me with two illnesses beyond your run-of-the-mill pregnancy symptoms:

1) Extensive morning sickness, for which I was prescribed a pill I will certainly pick up as soon as I don't feel like barfing.

2) Hypotension. 

My blood pressure was 100/60 in the office that morning, but I was also feeling relatively good. Dr. Park says it is likely getting even lower when I am feeling terrible. I felt better already knowing I was not just a wimp. My low blood pressure can be attributed to the fact that I generally have borderline low blood pressure, and also more interestingly to my gigantic uterus. I guess it is fair to say that the latter is more an emotional than factual assessment. 

Apparently because of my petite stature and my lack of belly pop (are you kidding? this is not considered popped?) my enlarged uterus (currently housing a baby that is between 4 and 5 inches from rump to crown) is pressing right along the main artery that carries nourishment to baby orange, but also the blood to my brain. My blood pressure is low and periodically dropping extremely low, causing me to feel faint. Doctor Park thinks this should improve once my baby pokes out and relieves some pressure from my main vein. In the mean time as we wait, the solution is to stay hydrated (check) and eat more salt (hooray). In a perfect pregnancy cliche, the answer may lie in eating more pickles.