It’s 10:00 a.m. on Thursday morning. You are pregnant and on your way to a 24 week checkup with your doctor. Your mood is excited, happy and confident as you muse about cute baby clothes, a name for the baby, shopping for a crib, and taking a healthy baby home from hospital.
One month ago, however, coming home from your 20 week checkup, your mood was much more anxious and distressed. The nurse practitioner had taken your blood pressure and other vitals. The doctor came to talk with you and shared her concern that your blood pressure was higher than normal and you might have preeclampsia.
Preeclampsia or toxemia is a potentially dangerous complication of pregnancy that is usually diagnosed by high blood pressure and water retention. Your doctor talked about possibly prescribing oral or IV medications and monitoring you more frequently. There was even a possibility that the baby might have to be delivered early.
Back at home you began checking you own blood pressure readings on various days at various times. All your readings were within normal range. Hmmm! Could it be that you have White Coat Syndrome?
Google to the rescue! You learn that White Coat Syndrome means that your blood pressure reads high when taken in the stressful atmosphere of the doctor’s office but routinely reads normal when monitored in the calm environment at home. You also learn that Hypnotherapy can be very effective in training you to better control your blood pressure in anxious, stressful situations.
If you actually have preeclampsia, you should be appropriately treated by your physician. If White Coat Syndrome is triggering high blood pressure at your doctor’s office, hypnotherapy may help you to avoid unneeded medicine and medical interventions in your pregnancy.
In Hypnotherapy, you can gain skills to cope with your stress and anxiety. You can learn how to anchor the calm and relaxed feeling that you feel in hypnosis to a physical trigger that you can use whenever you need.
You will discover what you are telling yourself each day about your stress and replace that self-talk with a set of positive affirmations that are authentic and powerful for your particular situation. These affirmations will be embedded in your subconscious mind under hypnosis and you will learn how to reinforce them with daily practice.
In my practice I have worked with many pregnant women whose doctors were concerned that they may be developing preeclampsia. These women knew that they had “white coat syndrome.” They wanted to have their blood pressure reading at the doctor’s office be as low as it was when they were at home. Working together, we empowered them to approach their doctor visits with calm, relaxed confidence that they could keep their White Coat Syndrome blood pressure readings in the normal range. They did and they each delivered a healthy baby at term.
For more information about these topics please see:
Preeclampsia defined:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/preeclampsia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355745
White-Coat Hypertension and Masked Hypertension:
For a free hypnotherapy consultation you are invited to call 818-929-4944 or join us any Wednesday on my Hypnotherapy Q & A. Register here:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tdeGtqTkuGtZCVlhQCzVEeRkxbTigRbBW
Sincerely,
Cinda