Tatum is over a year old now, and I realize that I never posted her birth-day story. In (belated) celebration of her birthday, I will do that now. I know this will be very boring to some of you, and very gross to others of you. Feel no pressure to read it… it is mostly for me to remember and (hopefully) compare it to the births of our other children someday.
So, as most of you know I had gestational diabetes while I was pregnant with Tater-tot. This means that 2x a week I had to go to Dr. Atkinson’s office for non-stress tests- basically, they put monitors on your belly (the same ones they use during labor) and give you a clicky button. You are supposed to push the clicky button every time your baby moves. When you click the button, it marks the spot on the heartbeat print-out thing (again, the same type thing as when you’re in labor). They check all the places where you clicked (i.e. the baby moved) and make sure her heartbeat did not drop with the movement, which would indicate distress. Thankfully, sweet Tatum always performed wonderfully at these NSTs (if your baby wasn’t being very active they would poke at her with a vibrator buzzy thing to wake her up- always seemed a little mean to me) and only had to be buzzed a few times. Her heartbeat was always strong and would increase with movement. However, the nurses and aides at Dr. Atkinson’s office were pressuring me to set an induction date as my actual; due date drew near. I did NOT want to schedule an induction unless medically necessary (yes diabetes is a possible medical reason, but she always did so well on the NSTs I figured she was healthy). Plus, I had been 2 cm dilated (not much) but 90% effaced (a lot) for like 3 weeks, I figured my water would break eventually…hopefully before an induction was necessary. When I explained this to the nurses they brought Dr. Atkinson in to talk to me about it. He agreed with me that it would be okay to wait as long as Tatum kept looking good. And to be sure of this, he wanted to do a high-risk sonogram on me right then. Never one to pass up an opportunity to see that sweet face, I excitedly agreed. Mostly, he was concerned with my fluid level and my placenta (which had been a grade 3 for some time…he said this meant it looked too mature… basically it wasn’t ideal). All of this looked normal. Then they did the measurements of the baby. This did not look so good. Her little belly had not grown enough from this last time they measured and this was concerning. Dr. Atkinson said he would call Dr. Devine and explain his findings to her. Dr. Devine was in surgery on this day so wasn’t able to look at the information. When I called her office in the afternoon, her wonderful nurse said she had relayed the information to Dr. Devine over the phone and that she wasn’t immediately too concerned. Phew. Then about 7 o’clock that evening Dr. Devine called me. She had just gotten back to her office after a full day in surgery and was looking through the information from Dr. Atkinson (side note- how wonderful is Dr. Devine? She went back to her office to take a closer look at that stuff after a long day and then called me to discuss it when she was technically ‘off the clock’). Dr. Devine was more concerned after looking more closely. She told me she trusted Dr. Atkinson’s opinion (not that I didn’t; I just wanted her opinion too) and felt induction the next morning would be the wisest move. Because Dr. Devine is wonderful and amazing and always respected my opinion and never once tried to force her views on me or pressure me to do something I didn’t feel right about, I took her advice. All of this process took over an hour (talking with Dr. Devine, discussing it with Brian, then talking to Dr. Devine again, then her scheduling the induction), so it was about 8:30pm when we knew we would be holding Tatum the next day.
Once we knew this wonderful news we called our parents to tell them. Then I did what any rational pregnant woman would do- I cleaned the house, did the laundry, and changed our sheets. Hello? When we came home from the hospital a BABY would be with us… things needed to be clean. Right? Once we (Brian was wonderfully understanding and helped me J) were finished with this, Brian and I went out to eat at my favorite restaurant- Olive Garden. Our parents (minus Kenny) came over to our house for a bit. They all had excuses as to why they came, but really they were just excited and wanted to see the belly one last time. After lots of pictures everyone left (including our dogs, whom Sharon took home to keep for us while we were in the hospital). Brian and I went to bed and actually slept really well. But then we had to wake up at the butt crack of dawn to get to the hospital. Of course I had to shower and shave before we left… which had grown increasingly difficult to do on account of the now quite large (and fantastic, I might add) belly.
Yes, you have read this far and we are not even at the hospital yet J
So, we get to the hospital, get checked in and get an enema. This was my first enema. It was not fun. Not that I expected it to be...but it really was not fun. I do not think I will opt for an enema next time around. Then I get hooked up to 2948734 lines and machines. Right after I got hooked up to the fetal monitors, I had my first real (not Braxton-Hicks) contraction. This was really exciting to me because they had not started the pitocin yet.
They started the pitocin really slowly- again because Dr. Devine is awesome and she knew that I didn’t want an epidural right away. So things moved fairly slowly at first. The contractions were strong but bearable. Oh, I forgot to say that we got to the hospital about 6am and things got started about 7am. At about 12pm Dr. Devine came in and we decided to go ahead and break my water (I had hoped this wouldn’t be necessary, but I didn’t want to face a c-section if things went too slowly.). It felt like a balloon popping and then like I peed my pants. Immediately after that, like 5 visitors came all at once. Also, immediately after that the pain got incrementally worse and I was in serious pain and had still not gotten an epidural. Bad timing for the visitors because I was too distracted by them to remember any other the techniques from birth class. However, one of said visitors was my dad (another side note- Dad was in surgery that morning in the same hospital and would come up and check on us between each case-super sweet). He was against holding off on the epidural for the past 9 months, and once we told him we were inducing he was REALLY against it (my dad can not handle seeing his baby in pain). When he saw me then he could tell things had gotten a lot worse since the last time he had seen me (not more than an hour) so he informed me that he was going to just go put my name on the epidural list, since there might be a wait, but I could always change my mind if I didn’t want it. Well, I did not change my mind. And Dr. Brown (awesome anesthesiologist) did not get there a second too soon. Brian was amazing (as always) during all of this and was right there for whatever I needed him for. My mom, who is an anesthesiologist herself, was in the room with me and Brian when Dr. Brown came in. She asked me if it would make me uncomfortable for her to be there during the epidural. I laughed and told her it did not make me uncomfortable, but she might need to ask Dr. Brown. Fortunately, Dr. Brown was not too intimidated by an anesthesiologist-mother watching because she did a wonderful job and I could not feel/move my feet for about 8 hours. I had several very strong contractions while she was doing the epidural, which was nerve racking for me. But sweet hubby held my hands really tight and helped me stay very still.
After the epidural a few more visitors came in, but I mostly tried to sleep. I don’t remember what time it was when Dr. Devine came in to check me and said I was 10cm and ready to push. But I did not feel the ‘urge’ to push, so she allowed me to wait. (I know, amazing doctor right. She could have just had me push so she could deliver and go home, but she allowed me to wait. Which meant she had to wait to.) At some point I started getting low blood sugar, a problem I had pre-pregnancy (yes it is strange that a hypoglycemic became hyperglycemic during pregnancy… no that is not common) but I was scared to eat a popsicle because I thought the spike in sugar might make Tatum’s insulin spike and then she would have low blood sugar when she was born and then they might not let me nurse her because they would want to giver her a sugar-water bottle. I tend to worry sometimes. I ended up eating the popsicle though because I was worried that if I didnt I would be too weak to push and I might have to get a c-section. I tend to worry sometimes. The popsicle made me feel 100x better though.
When Dr. Devine came back in around 2:25ish to check me I was still not having a huge urge to push but she checked me any way. When she lifted up the sheet she could see Tatum’s head poking out. Opps. That epidural was really working. Andi- nurse extraordinaire moved the mirror (which she had already placed in the room per my request- I wanted to see Tatum being born and I don’t have a giraffe neck.) into place and got things all set up while another nurse put my hair in a ponytail -because Brian didn’t know how and I could not lean forward without the use of my arms, thus having no free hand with which to ponytail.
Then it was time to push!! The first push I could not remember if I was supposed to hold my breath or breathe out.. so I did both for half the time. Then Andi suggested I pick one or the other and hold my breath. So the next contraction I held my breath and pushed. And that was it. Tatum was out. 2 pushes. 2 minutes. Bam.
As soon as Princess was born they placed her on my chest (at which time she pooped on me. The first of many J) I don’t remember much except looking into her eyes and talking to her. I don’t remember what I told her. I remember how my voice soothed her and how long her skinny little fingers were. She held onto my fingers. She was beautiful and perfect. Brian cut the cord during our moment. They took her to the little table thing in the room to check her out , check her sugar (which was good, the popsicle did not do as a I worried it might) and clean her up and poke her with things. Then Brian put on her first diaper. While this was happening, Dr. Devine was sewing me up from a stage 2 tear and I was asking to see the placenta (my parents are doctors, gross things interest me). Then they brought her back to me and I got to hold her again. Lots of people came in to see her at after that. Im pretty positive we broke lots of rules regarding how many people were supposed to be in that room. Millions of pictures were taken.
I had still not gotten to nurse Tatum and the lactation consultant was on her way (which I highly recommend, she was there the first time I nursed which was such a confidence booster) so I threatened everyone that my you-know-whats were coming out so they better leave if they didn’t want to see. Brian and my mom stayed. Tatum latched on perfectly the very first time (shes an over-achiever, what can I say). Nursing her that first time was such a sweet moment.
After nursing, they took Tatum to the nursery for more poking and prodding (standard procedure, not my preference) and moved us to the post-partum room. This is past lengthy so I will summarize the rest of the hospital stay- nursing hurt really bad and there was blood. Not much sleep. Lots of wonderful friends. It was sleeting when we took her home. Oh. And, Andi had to lift me from bed to wheelchair and then wheelchair to bed because my feet and legs were still totally numb. I didn’t walk or even stand until after 8pm.
