Oh, and I forgot to mention: do you know how they came up with "normal range" for blood pressures?
They used the average blood pressures from GIs during their WWII draft physicals. So blood pressure is based on an active, young, male population, and doesn't take into account the normal range for people who are elderly, children, fat, female, or pretty much anything except acceptable for military service. (Yes, the BP range actually excludes half the population. Sensible, ain't it?)
They came up with the "normal range" of healthy pulse (60-100 beats per minute) because that's the easiest range to read on an EKG strip.
The things you learn in nursing school.
They came up with 23 hours as the "desirable" length of a first-time labor and 6 hours for subsequent labors pretty much... randomly (and because that's what insurance companies think is a reasonable amount of time to pay for a woman's stay in the hospital). Which is one reason why I... um, lied when the nurse asked me, with Miss Boo, how long I had been in labor; it was really about 27-28 hours, all told, but I didn't want to be shipped off to a c-section at hour 24.
So be a little skeptical about "normal range". If you fall barely outside it, perhaps it's not quite as important as if you fall widely outside it.
Cheers,
Breanna
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