Hellobee

Headache, Day One

Around when I hit 29 weeks of pregnancy, I was sitting at work during a normal, average day, and suddenly my head was in excruciating pain. It was late afternoon and I figured it had to be the result of a poor night’s sleep and my regular tendencies toward headaches — I’m a terrible jaw clencher and tooth grinder, and I carry a lot of my stress and tension in my neck and head muscles. We’ve been dealing with home renovations for approximately forever, and I assumed that it was all catching up with me in the form of one of my usual tension headaches.

Headache, Day Two

I roughed it out without meds, figuring it’d maybe go away after I fell asleep that night. But I woke up at 3 a.m. the next day and found myself in so much pain that Mac Daddy actually got up and drove to a convenience store to buy me extra-strength Tylenol. I’ve encountered a lot of conflicting information about acetaminophen in pregnancy, and acetaminophen in general, lately, but I will take it when it seems warranted, personally. Two pills dulled the pain enough that I fell back asleep.

Conveniently, I had a pre-booked massage therapy appointment for later that afternoon, and during that, the therapist told me just how badly knotted-up my neck and shoulder muscles really were. She told me to drink a lot of water, consider buying a better pillow, and work on neck exercises in the heat of the shower. My head still hurt, but it felt manageable, and the massage helped a lot.

Headache, Day Three

At 6 a.m. the following day I woke up in even worse pain than before, and although I immediately took two Tylenol, the pain didn’t budge. My regular cup of coffee did nothing to help, nor did ice packs, heat, a bath, rest, or more Tylenol later on in the day. I had to work on and off all day, which felt torturous, and I had promised M we’d all go to a family fun event, so I somehow pulled off a few hours of boisterously loud outdoor adventures before I told everyone we absolutely had to go home before I had a panic attack in front of everyone.

On the half-hour drive back from the camp where we were playing, Mac Daddy and my dad, who was visiting, convinced me I needed to seek medical attention. At that point it had been about 13 hours of severe headache pain that was not dying down at all, three days of head pain in general, and I was basically writhing in pain in the passenger seat of the truck.

Living in a small town, our doctors’ clinic is only open weekdays, and if you want a walk-in appointment you need to call at 7:30 a.m. and hope nobody else got through first. This was happening on a Saturday evening, so the clinic was not an option. We don’t have urgent care, nor any other kind of walk-in appointments available, so the only place I could go was the emergency room. I think the medical staff here expect that people will use the ER as a walk-in clinic when things are urgent but perhaps not emergent, even though it’s technically considered an abuse of our provincial health care system — but I always feel guilty about going in to emerg when it’s not really an emergency in my view. I think if I didn’t have two people urging me to go I probably would’ve stayed home and just felt horrible.

Heading to the ER

The good thing about our small town ER, though, is that it’s usually pretty fast. I was triaged right away, and was relieved to see my blood pressure was normal as that was one of my major concerns. Sitting back out in the waiting room with the bright lights, TV noise, and people incessantly thumping on vending machines was hellish, but the staff worked to get me into a quiet room as soon as possible.

I saw a med student first, who took my medical history and performed a basic neurological assessment and determined it probably wasn’t any kind of problem within that realm. She and her overseeing doctor were about to go off shift after that, but my regular family doctor was actually the one coming on board next, and she decided to treat me for a migraine. Prior to that I’d never, ever had a migraine before, as far as I know, which may have contributed to why I had no idea how to handle that kind of pain!

A nurse came in and hooked me up to an IV — my first since my labour and delivery with M, and I’m proud to say that I barely even flinched this time — and for about an hour, I sat with the lights off getting a drip of Maxeran (Reglan in the USA), and then regular fluids. Mac Daddy very quietly watched YouTube videos on his phone and scavenged me a turkey sandwich. About halfway through the drip, things started to dwindle into a duller pain, and when my doctor came in at the end of the hour, I was feeling much better so she released me back home.

What Comes Next?

Before we left, we talked to my doctor a bit about migraines, given my complete inexperience with them — she told me that for many women, pregnancy can kickstart chronic migraines, owing to hormones, or it can trigger one-off instances of migraine. Some women who are regular migraine sufferers actually get a break when they’re pregnant!

Migraines can also be triggered by a huge list of other factors, from stress to diet to weather, so unfortunately, there’s no saying if this is going to be something I’ll have to deal with in the future. At the time, my dad was cooking a lot of our meals and his food tends to be a bit saltier and more processed than our normal diets, plus I was having a hard time sleeping (I’ve since ordered new pillows), and the weather was shifting into autumn, so I truly have no idea what triggered this episode.

I went home feeling quite drained, but able to sleep with the headache finally mostly gone. The next morning my head felt tight again, so I tried to avoid bright light and loud noise, as well as hydrating as much as I humanly could.

I felt a bit weird about getting IV meds while pregnant, but such extended pain was seriously impacting me, and I trusted all of the doctors involved with choosing the Maxeran. My doctor told me the standard practice for severe headaches/migraine in our ER is typically fluids and an anti-inflammatory, but at 30 weeks, anti-inflammatories are out of the question, so that’s how they decided on Maxeran. In the future, she advised me to take Tylenol and Gravol (Dramamine in the USA) as soon as I feel something severe coming on, as it’s easier to knock out a headache with meds before it really sets in.

If you’ve experienced a migraine during pregnancy, what was it like and how did you treat it? I was totally confounded on what to do after realizing Tylenol didn’t work!