Here it comes

My sweet sister. I know how she feels. She just wants things to be natural, go smoothly. She wants to go into labor on her own. When the baby is ready to come. But she's disempowered and endangered by this menace called preeclampsia, and it's just not going to be that way.

I think she was starting to believe that she might not be sick. While on bedrest, her blood pressure has been decent. Still high for her, but not hypertensive. She's had the symptoms that stem from high blood pressure - constant headaches, dizziness, tingly hands - but none of the other ones like epigastric pain (pressure or pain in your upper right quadrant or upper middle abdomen). Poor girl. She was really starting to believe that the whole preeclampsia scare was a fluke. That she willed it away and that things will go smoothly. I so wish that was possible. I've had to sit back and keep my mouth shut, while dealing with absolute fear of losing my sister. And my niece.

I've been waiting with a heavy heart for the moment when things turned. She had a prenatal appointment yesterday, one day after her due date. She had protein in her urine again. Her blood pressure was borderline hypertensive (defined as 140/90) after lying down for a non-stress test for 45 minutes. She's barely dilated and her OB wanted to induce. Now, I can understand if she didn't grasp the weight of the situation why she might refuse to be induced. But this girl knows all about preeclampsia. She knows all about HELLP syndrome, and how close my son and I came to the brink. But she's a woman like any other. Excited to be a mom, living out a dream she's had since she was a little girl, still clinging to her birth hopes, or her denial that something is going wrong in her body, or something. I don't know. She can't explain it.

I try so hard not to therapize her or tell her what to do, two things she's totally sick of her big sister always doing. But I am really scared for her and the baby. And I'm still not happy with her OB, who I think should have absolutely induced her by now, no question. I've tried to talk her into castor oil. Her OB inserted a balloon catheter to try to get her to dilate more, but it doesn't seem to have done much. Her OB says she will induce Friday no matter what, if not sooner.

I am holding my breath.