Samantha Y

Age at interview: 29

Age at diagnosis: 29

Brief Outline:

Samantha was pregnant with her first child. When she was diagnosed with high blood pressure she was invited to join the BuMP study. She was induced three weeks early.

Background:

Samantha was pregnant with her first child. She is a shop floor manager.

More about me...

Samantha was pregnant with her first child. Early visits to her midwife revealed high blood pressure, and she was invited to join the BuMP study. She took her blood pressure throughout her pregnancy, and was hospitalized four times during her pregnancy because of her blood pressure. Doctors decided to induce her three weeks early, as her blood pressure was rising. 

Samantha Y learnt how to use and understand the blood pressure monitor in the BuMP study.

It’s got a booklet and it explains like, because obviously I didn’t know anything about the readings, I didn’t understand what the numbers meant, but it explains, it explains in the book as well, so you have a quick look at that and then you get used to it really quickly so.

Yeah and what about understanding if, you touched on it a bit a few minutes ago, if there’s a high reading?

[mm]

Understanding what to do, was that really clearly explained, you know, you know what you needed to do if your reading was too high?

Yeah, the number that you text in to, you have to text in every reading that you have, it tells you what to do. It texts back and says, if, you know, it’s fine, it will just say, thanks, do it again later, sort of thing or if it says, it’s raised, do it again in four hours, or it’s high, do it again in five minutes and if it’s still high, it tells you to ring your GP or out of hours immediately. 

Samantha Y self-monitored her blood pressure in pregnancy as part of the BuMP study. She developed high blood pressure and found it could be frightening to see the readings.

Sometimes it was a real shock. You’d just be laying there and they’d take your blood pressure and, yeah, it’d be really high.

Did you find that worrying? 

Yeah, my partner did actually, more than anything. There was one point where he was he wanted me to come off it because he thought that it was making me more worried and I wouldn’t be worried, I’d only be worried sometimes when, because there was a couple of times when I was going to go and see my sister and I had to take it before I went out and then it was, like it was through the roof and then that would sort of make me really anxious because I’d be, when I got admitted to hospital like the, after, one time it was really high, they made me stay in overnight to monitor me, and then after that, it did make me anxious, when I’d taken it and it was high, because then I knew I was going to have to go into hospital.