I’m so excited to introduce y’all to our first born daughter, Mary Katherine ‘MK’ Atchison! Named for my grandmothers, Mary and Katherine, she was born Monday, March 25, at 3:35pm at seven pounds, 19 and 3/4 inches. We are absolutely smitten and the weeks have flown by. I wanted to share MK’s birth story, mostly because I’m already forgetting details so want it written down. I’ve always found reading birth stories fascinating, even before I was pregnant, so I thought I’d share ours! A little note for moms and those expecting: everyone’s pregnancy and birth is so different! Comparison is truly the thief of joy, so please don’t be discouraged if you find yourself wishing your story was more like mine. I had a pretty easy labor, but the end of my pregnancy was rough and we ended up back at the hospital after MK was born.. we all have our stuff 🙂
I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes around 32 weeks. It seemed like the main concern with GD is that babies can get too big, so my doctor scheduled an induction one week early at 39 weeks. I could (and may) write a whole other blog post on gestational diabetes, but will try and keep this part brief.. I have a lot of thoughts about GD. My experience opened my eyes to many facets of our healthcare system. There is a lot of different (and conflicting) information available about GD, its causes, and best treatment practices. Let me put a disclaimer out first that I am not a medical professional and this is in no way medical advice. I may have some of this wrong, I’m simply sharing my experience.. please keep in mind that babies eat your brain so I may be misremembering some details 😉 Gestational diabetes is diabetes diagnosed during pregnancy that in most cases, disappears after the baby is born. It is caused by your body not making enough insulin during pregnancy. From my understanding, there are risk factors like diabetes running in your family or being overweight, but it can also be completely random and unrelated. My mom had GD when she was pregnant with me, so I wasn’t totally surprised when I failed the glucose test. When diagnosed, you have to monitor your blood sugar just like someone with diabetes does and regulate it with diet. If you cannot manage your blood sugar with diet, your doctor will most likely prescribe insulin. I was able to manage mine with diet until the very end. As you progress with pregnancy your hormones can make it even harder to regulate. For me, no matter what I tried I couldn’t get my fasting blood sugars stable, so for the last ten days of pregnancy I had to take a bedtime insulin shot.
The wildest thing about GD is that once the baby was out, none of my doctors were concerned about my blood sugar at all! They tested it a few times during my induction, and MK’s was tested four times after she was born, but they did not do one single test on me after I delivered. I still had a continuous glucose monitor on, so I could see that my blood sugar had gone down. I will have an appointment with my endocrinologist in July to check on things, but it’s wild to me that it’s not standard to have anything monitored outside of one appointment months later! Especially considering that people with gestational diabetes are 50% more likely to develop diabetes later in life. I have so many thoughts about this, definitely going to have to write another blog post, ha!
But let’s get down to the main event! As I said earlier, I had a scheduled induction at 39 weeks. We were scheduled to go in at midnight on a Sunday night. That Sunday was the longest day of my life… it felt like we were sitting around waiting for days. I had already packed my hospital bag and done all of the prep I was going to do. We went to church and brunch, then laid around the house watching the NCAA basketball tournament, playing backgammon and went on a walk. I should have napped, but I was too anxious. Finally at 11:30 we loaded up the car and headed to the hospital!
I delivered at Baptist Health and I may be biased, but from what I’ve heard I think it’s the best hospital to deliver at in Lexington. The rooms are spacious and comfortable. Dave had a nice sized couch in the labor and delivery room and he slept great haha. You also get a full size bed on the mother and baby floor. But anyways, we got to the labor and delivery floor and checked in, which took about five minutes. They showed us to our room and we met our overnight nurse. Our nurse asked us about a birth plan, went over how things would work, and took my blood sugar and did bloodwork for some tests. I was hooked to two monitors so they could monitor the baby’s heart rate and my contractions. A note on birth plans.. I did not really have one. The only feelings I had were that I wanted an epidural, but wanted to try and wait to get it until I really needed it. I also wanted to be able to still feel a little bit so that I could feel contractions and know when to push. I talked to my nurse about this and she said she would advise the best time to ask for my epidural, gauging how long it would take the anesthesiologist to get there so I wouldn’t wait too long. She also said she would try and get the doctor that had a “lighter touch” for epidurals so I wouldn’t be completely numb. I don’t know if she was just telling me that haha, but I could still feel a little bit and was able to kind of move my legs a bit so it might have worked. My advice would be to tell your nurse everything you are thinking and ask them all of the questions because they are the pros and have seen it all. Every nurse we encountered was so kind and helpful I would definitely lean on them!
After we got settled in it was probably around 1am and the laborist came to put in my foley bulb. A foley bulb is a catheter that is used to help you dilate. I had been dilated at 1 for the last two weeks, and was between 1-2 when I got to the hospital. Inserting the bulb was uncomfortable, but not too painful in my opinion. I couldn’t really feel it at first after they put it in. They also started me on Pitocin to start contractions. When we went over everything with our nurse she gave me options for pain management. The pain medicine I was offered for the foley bulb was fentanyl, which she said would last for about an hour. I could get multiple doses, but she warned that its effectiveness would decrease with each dose, so to keep that in mind with how soon I started it. Probably within an hour of starting the Pitocin, I was in a relative amount of pain, but not unbearable by any means. It was enough pain that I couldn’t sleep, so I tried bouncing on a medicine ball. It helped to kind of rock back and forth on the ball to get through a contraction. Around 3am the pain had gotten worse, so I asked my nurse to start the fentanyl. She started with a lower dose to see how I did. Some people can feel sick with narcotic pain medicine, but I was fine. I elected to do the higher dose after an hour and was able to actually get some sleep. I think I got three doses of the fentanyl and then my nurse took the foley bulb out around 7am and I was dilated to around 4.
My doctor came in around 9am to break my water. They do this with a small hook like a knitting needle. I don’t remember feeling anything at all. I believe they also upped my Pitocin at this point. I could definitely start to feel the contractions more. At this point, our day nurse had started who would be with us through the delivery. I talked to her more about the epidural and made plans for when I’d want that. The contractions continued to get worse, but not yet unbearable. I was advised to move around as much as I could before I got an epidural to keep labor progressing. I paced around my room and continued to bounce and rock on the exercise ball. It also helped to lean my arms against the wall during a contraction. Around 10:30 or 11, I was starting to feel like I was ready for the epidural. A nurse was in our room at the time and she recommended we go ahead and call. It took about 30 minutes for them to get to my room, and by the time that they were there I was veryyyy ready for the epidural 😉 If y’all know me, you know I don’t do well with needles and this was actually the part of labor I was most nervous about. I *briefly* considered going epidural free, but knew I would regret that. I talked to my nurses and the anesthesiologist about having the vasovagal reflex (passing out) and they were all really kind and understanding. I was nervous about this too because I’ve found some medical professionals won’t take me seriously or think I’m overreacting when I truly cannot control my body’s response. But everyone was great about it and reassured me they had seen it all and would be able to help me through it. When it was time for the epidural, I sat on the edge of the bed with a nurse in front of me who kind of held my arms and held me in place (also letting me squeeze her hands). The anesthesiologist was behind me and I could not see a thing. They numbed me first which felt like a pinch and then the epidural went in no problem. The whole process maybe took a minute and truly I barely remember it!
The epidural took maybe ten minutes to set in. It was such a strange sensation, it felt kind of cooling at first and then your legs are just numb. The only thing I can think to relate it too is when your arm falls asleep from sleeping on top of it and you can’t move it. Almost like dead weight. I could still kind of move my legs if I really tried but just barely and would need help repositioning etc. I was also able to sleep so well after I got the epidural! Truly I slept for most of my labor from this point on. My nurses had me use a peanut ball (an exercise ball shaped like a peanut that goes between your legs) to get MK down the birth canal. My nurses would put me in different positions about once an hour, moving me to different sides and my legs in different positions with the ball. I believe the technique is called ‘spinning babies’ but could be remembering that wrong! Regardless I think it contributed to my labor being so short so I will definitely ask for it again with our next baby.
Now this is where the timeline gets murky it was all such a blur! My nurses came in to reposition me maybe around 2pm. I think I was around 7cm. My nurse thought we might be ready to push soon and she was going to come back for us to start. I was kind of in and out of sleep, but Dave said it took forever for her to come back and she said something about there being a lot of activity on the floor – I think they had a few surprise c sections. So it was probably 3pm when my nurse came back. She repositioned me and when they did that, couldn’t get one of the monitors to read, so she said she was going to check me because she thought the baby had dropped lower. Then she goes something like “yep I see hair!” She had me do a practice push and after about one second said stop you’re having this baby! She called my doctor and started getting everything ready for me to push.
It was truly such a blur and out of body experience that I don’t remember what all happened before we started pushing, but I know there were a few more people in the room. My doctor came in and talked me through a few things. Dave was up by my head and two nurses were holding my legs. We waited for a contraction and I started to push and they started talking about all her hair! I remember asking if her hair was dark because my mother in law was hoping for a dark haired baby because all my other nieces are blond. My nurse then asked if I wanted them to bring down the mirror. I had told them at first I didn’t want the mirror because I didn’t want to see all the blood and stuff, but when you’re in the moment I truly didn’t care about any of it. She brought down the mirror and I said something along the lines of “oh my gosh her head is so small!” and my doctor laughed and said that’s how you know an epidural works! This all happened really quick while we were waiting for the next contraction and with the next one I did one more push and she was out! I know I am so lucky, but she came out in four pushes and the whole thing lasted maybe five minutes. I was kind of in shock when she came out because I had anticipated labor to be such a longer process I couldn’t believe I was holding her! A truly surreal moment.
Dave cut the umbilical cord and I held her on my chest for a couple minutes before they took her to weigh her and do all the official things. All of this happened in the room where I could see her and Dave took photos of her being weighed etc. Then we probably had thirty minutes or so with her before they took us up to the mother baby floor. I absolutely loved being at the hospital. I know some people say they were dying to get out, but I cried when we left ha! Everyone was so nice and I think being first time parents it felt very safe and comforting to have people we could ask all the questions and assist in caring for our baby. It was also really sweet being in our little newborn bubble just the three of us. I’ll be honest, going home was hard and I struggled for the first several weeks. MK had jaundice that we had to go back to the hospital to treat so that was hard and subsequently made nursing and feeding pretty hard. But mostly I struggled with the hormones and crazy emotions. I know everyone says the postpartum hormones are crazy, but there’s no way to adequately communicate what they are like (and they’re different for everyone). I found myself crying and not knowing why. I felt a lot of pressure to “soak up” all the newborn moments and was worried I wasn’t enjoying it enough. Dave also went back to work pretty much immediately, and I really struggled with that as well. I had plenty of help from my mom and lots of people who offered to help, so it wasn’t that I needed Dave’s help at home, I just really wanted him there. It’s like he was my safe place and I just felt better when he was around. Probably around week four or five I started to feel more level-headed and didn’t have the extreme hormonal feelings. All that to say, I still really loved the newborn stage and am so grateful I got to spend that special time with MK. I’m wrapping up my twelve weeks of maternity leave this week and while I love my job and want to go back to it, am so sad to not be spending all day with her anymore. Y’all wish my luck for my first day back 😉
