TUESDAY, MARCH 10TH, 2015. 35 WEEKS AND 5 DAYS PREGNANT

We had some lovely and very special friends in town staying in our home for a long weekend and we were saying goodbye to them in the afternoon. I had started that morning to feel what I thought may be contractions. But I was so uncomfortable during those last few weeks that it was hard for me to distinguish between labor and just more of being uncomfortable. I was also second guessing myself, because I had just been to the doctor and I was 0 cm dilated and 0% effaced. That evening I packed my hospital bags and sincerely prayed that this was not true labor. I texted Jordan at work that I didn’t feel good and asked him how bad it would be if he was not able to go to work the next day. I asked him to go ahead and get things that needed to be done around there finished just in case he wouldn’t be back at work for the rest of the week.

Of course, a text like that got an immediate phone call response from my husband. He is the BEST PERSON IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD. But, he is not the most chill person in the whole entire world. 😉 In fact, he is probably one of the least chill persons when it comes to worrying about me. Which I appreciate tremendously. But, that has warranted a couple of un necessary phone calls to … you know… my mom… my sisters…. and shout out to the St. Matthews Fire Department. 😉 (True story.)

One of the biggest reasons I hate diabetes is because of the fear that it has brought to the people who love me. I hate seeing how scared my husband is when I am having a bad low. I hate that he is scared because of truly scary things that he has actually seen. I hate knowing that my parents still have to worry about my health. One of the most disturbing things to me after having my first seizure was seeing how afraid my most-strong-and-army-man-dad was when I woke up in his arms. I hate that my mom lost and loses sleep over me. I don’t like that my sisters have found me seizing and choking on throw up. The sweetest in – laws a girl could have have seen too much. Members of my family frequently tell me how they wished they could take diabetes away from me. These are things that I wish I could take from them.

Jordan was calling me approximately every ten minutes asking me if I needed go to the hospital, if my water had broken, if he needed to come home, if I was alive, …. you know…. normal and rational questions that weren’t panic induced at all. 😉 I did all the things to do when you are trying to see if you can make contractions stop: drank water, changed positions, took a bath… My contractions were coming right at every 4 minutes at this point and they weren’t going away with the different things I was trying.

I was really excited to notice earlier this week that the note where I was tracking my contractions was still saved on my phone. Such sweet memories of exciting beginnings!

My sister, Lydia, was living with us at the time and she got in late that night. When she came in I was sure not to tell her how I was feeling because I didn’t want her to worry. And I also didn’t want to be humiliated if it turned out to be that what I thought was contractions was just some constipation pains or more heart burn or just plain old achiness. But I was also sure to feel out what her schedule was for the following day because she was our babysitter plan. I took note that she had a midterm the next day at 8 AM.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11TH, 2015. 35 WEEKS AND 6 DAYS PREGNANT

When Jordan got home from work at around 1am on Wednesday morning, he was pretty alarmed to be able to see my stomach contracting, which did not help his anxiety about the situation. He was really just wanting to go to the hospital. The pain was pretty intense. But, there was still some sort of denial in me that thought I could just be feeling non contraction related pain. Haha. And somehow I convinced Jordan to NOT drive me to the hospital immediately. We decided to wait and sleep. Which turned out to be just waiting and not sleeping….. because I was in pain and Jordan was in turmoil.

At around 4:30, my contractions had gotten stronger and there was no doubt what was happening. In a normal situation I would have waited longer to go to the hospital. But because I was preterm, and because I knew my doctors would want to stop labor, we decided to go on in. So we loaded up and left, without waking and telling Lydia, who was our babysitter. Instead I just sent her a text not to leave our house because she was the only adult there. I told her that I was sure my doctors would stop labor and either Jordan or both of us would be back for her to go take her mid term.

When we got to the hospital and got all hooked up to internal contraction monitors we saw that I was indeed having very strong contractions every 3 minutes. (Quick random tid bit, do you know that the only way to measure strength of contractions is through an internal monitor? The external monitors are only measuring the length of the contraction. So those “hills” you point to to show how “strong” your contraction is, …. that actually means nothing as far as pain / intensity goes!? 😉 ). I was now 4 cm dilated and 100% effaced. They immediately admitted me to the hospital and started giving me Procardia to stop labor. My contractions on Procardia spaced out to 5 minutes apart, but then within twenty minutes returned back to contractions ever 3 minutes. They kept treating me with Procardia and my body would start to respond but then quickly return to contracting at ever 2.5 or so minutes. We were also pumping me with fluids, hoping that the more hydrated I was, the more my contractions would space out.

Jordan left at 7:30 to relieve Lydia of her post so that she could go to school. We were totally comfortable with him leaving because they were trying to stop labor, so nothing was happening and I was glad for him to go spend some time with Hadassah and have a special morning with her. I was pretty exhausted from all the events of the weekend, and not sleeping the night before. So before he left I asked the nurse if I could have some low grade pain medicine like tylenol so that I could maybe relax enough to rest. They said they wouldn’t give me tylenol but they would give me some other medicine I don’t know the name of. Jordan and I were glad with that and he left to go be with Hadassah. He was going to come back right after Lydia took her midterm, so he would only be gone a couple of hours.

A while later, a nurse brought me some pain medicine. I took the pill she gave me and I remember immediately starting to feel very disoriented and dizzy and panicy. I remember thinking my blood sugar was low and feeling like I was about to have a seizure. When Jordan came back I was bawling and shaking and hyperventilating. I was rambling on (which isn’t that uncommon), but my words weren’t understandable (a little less common). He was very alarmed. (I remember none of this part). He thought my blood sugar was low, so he immediately checked my blood sugar and started drawing up a mini glucagon injection. But when the number popped up on my meter, it wasn’t low. So he ran out and got a nurse and they told him that I was reacting to the pain medicine and I had been doing that for an hour. Ha!

My sweet husband came back in and the next thing that I remember from the morning was that he was sitting at the foot of my hospital bed, rubbing my legs and reading me the Psalms out loud. I remember being calmed and at peace once again, and feeling so well loved and cared for by him.

As soon as he stopped reading though I firmly and passionately told him, “you will never let them give me that stuff again, ok?”

I’d rather feel contractions than feel insane any day of the week! Ha!

At this point it was mid morning, and I had been given procardia 6 times. My doctor came in and explained that he was done doing that. It was obviously not working. He also went into our other options to attempt to stop labor, and then explained why he felt they were not wise choices. Rahab was not in distress, through all of this, so at the time I really thought, “surely we should keep trying to stop labor!” Lungs develop last, and in babies who have mothers with diabetes they develop even slower. I did not want NICU time for this baby. I did not want to be torn between home with Hadassah and hospital with Rahab. I wanted to be healthy and together. I asked him if we could try terbutaline. And he explained that that was kind of an old school way to try to stop labor, and it doesn’t actually seem to work for longer than a few hours. He felt that if my body was resisting the repeated doses of procardia, we just needed to trust that Rahab needed to come out.

He said that they would stop trying to prevent labor, but that they would also do nothing to encourage it unless Rahab started to not handle the contractions well. They would not administer pitocin or break my water. We would just let things go and hope that they go slowly because every day counts. He said the difference in 35 weeks and 6 days and 36 weeks could be a great deal.

At the word that these doctors were going to let Rahab come, my mom and dad were on the way….. On their way via one stop : My dad preaching that night at their church. THEN they were on their way! 😉

Once we had gotten settled in we wanted to see our big baby Hadassah. Lydia kindly brought Hadassah to visit and we had a really sweet time. She tried on hospital gloves, her daddy made her a glove balloon, we played and talked and colored and snacked and read books and had a really precious evening with her. We knew that it was a possibility the next time we saw her everything would be different. And that was really exciting and emotional in all sorts of wonderful ways.

Things for Rahab were moving along slowly, but surely. The slower the better in our opinion! That night I kept my legs crossed and Jordan and I watched some food network.

I love going to the hospital to have a baby. I just really love it. It just has to be the three most sweetest times of my whole life. I love seeing Jordan go into “having a baby mode.” He is kind and gentle and compassionate and encouraging. I love cuddling up on that little bed together knowing that our family is about to grow and that we are about to do something really, really hard together. I love that we are forced to sit still in the same room for hours and hours and I love the conversations it brings about. I love that he holds my hand, and all those emotions are swirling around: a whole new, unknown world we are about to jump into, we have no idea what to expect, but we aren’t terrified at all because we’re in it together. I’m just so excited that I want to cry, … and sometimes I do, and I look over and he’s crying, too. That time has been so dear to me that writing about it right now almost makes me feel ready to do it again. Almost. 😉

THURSDAY, MARCH 12TH, 2015, 36 WEEKS AND 0 DAYS PREGNANT

That Wednesday night / Thursday morning was really sweet and I will never forget it. It was also long though, and at about 3am I had asked for an epidural. Things started picking up and I felt like I really needed to rest so that I could have strength to do the work of delivering Rahab. At this point it had been a long time since I had slept, and it had been a very busy weekend before that. I was really exhausted.

I was sad to find out that our new hospital in Kentucky had a strict no-husband-in-the-room policy for the epidural. I’m not scared of needles, I’m not super sensitive to pain, but I’m not going to lie, my eyes filled with tears when he walked out of the room. I was not expecting them to make Jordan leave, because he didn’t have to leave when I had an epidural for Hadassah. But, it was no big deal. It took a couple of minutes and then he came right back in.

My parents had left straight from their church service Wednesday night. They got in at about 4am. I had already gotten my epidural so I was more comfortable, but very sleepy. Jordan had already fallen back asleep and was a bit of a zombie when my parents got there. I was so glad that they arrived before Rahab. They got an update, gave hugs, and then went back to our house so that they could be with Hadassah when Lydia needed to go to school in just a few short hours.

I got a couple hours of sleep in (interrupted by several blood sugar checks, but still.. sleep!). I woke up at 7:30 feeling so strange and my legs were so swollen. I had convinced myself that something had went wrong with the epidural. The anesthesiologist came back in and I asked her to take it out. I felt so weird and I knew I would not be able to push feeling like that. I was too numb. She assured me that it wasn’t from the epidural. But, I didn’t believe her and I convinced her to take it out.

At 8:00 I paged the nurses. I said, “you’ve got to check me. I’m pretty sure she’s coming out.” As the nurse checked me, my water broke in a big pop right in her face (not even kidding). She handled it like a champ though, even though she said that had never happened to her before. Other nurses her handed her towels and she was ringing out her hair as she said, “You were right lady, you are fully at a 10!” While the nurse was changing out her gown we heard a lot of commotion in the hallway. A woman wailing and a man screaming for help, nurses and doctors running back and forth to their room, and then the woman being wheeled away. My nurse told me not to move, that she was going to get my doctor. The NICU team started setting up their stuff and the NICU staff were in there at this point waiting with me for my maternal fetal medicine specialist to come deliver Rahab.

When she came back in the room, she did not have my doctor with her. She did not have any doctor with her. She had another nurse. She explained that there were several emergencies going on at the moment and that this was an extremely unheard of circumstance but that there was no doctor available at the moment. She said, “not to worry, nurses deliver babies all the time!”

That was.not.cool.with.this.momma! No way. I said, “um, no. I have type one diabetes. This baby is early. I have a history of placenta abruption. My doctor has expressed repeated concern of shoulder dystocia. I need a doctor.”

The nurse explained the situation — that all the maternal fetal medicine specialists were in emergency situations and all the OB’s were delivering babies. Jordan firmly told her, “you go look again.”

She left and came back with a man who introduced himself to me as a “hospitalist.” I asked him a lot of questions, one of which was “how many babies have you delivered?” Ha! I also asked him if he had ever had to break a babies collar bone because of shoulder dystocia, and he answered “yes”, which comforted me a little bit, but I was still a bit anxious and would have given anything to have a maternal fetal medicine specialist or an OB in the room. But Rahab was coming and there was just nothing to be done. He immediately looked at my legs and asked “how long have you been dealing with high blood pressure?” I said, “I’ve never once had high blood pressure. It’s always been on the low end of normal. I thought my legs were swelling from the epidural so I had them take it out.” He said, “No ma’am, epidurals don’t do that.” But, my blood pressure was still normal even then.

I had pushed through a few contractions and everything seemed to be going normally. But during the 10th contraction that they were having me push through everyone started yelling at me to stop pushing. I stopped, and they had already started putting me on oxygen.

During the push Rahab’s stats started looking very bad and they could see that the cord was wrapped around her neck. The doctor quickly made an incision and then had me push gently again as he was able to deliver her and unwrap the cord from around her neck.

And there she was!

Rahab Mercy Atkinson
8lbs, 7oz, 20.5 inches long
March 12th, 2015, 9:12 am

She was perfect.

And her cheeks did not disappoint

Rahab’s neonatologist did his initial check on her pretty quickly and then he handed her to me as they stitched me up. I can honestly say that it was the most emotional moment of my life. I had never been handed a fresh baby like that before, and I truly did not expect to get to hold her so soon. The tears flowed. 

They did take her back from me pretty quickly, which Rahab and I were not thrilled about.

At that time they checked her blood sugar. It was low, which everyone in the room was expecting. It was 26. The neonatologist said that he would feed her a high carb formula, and as long as she drank it fast enough, I could have her back while we waited to see if her blood sugar came up. I kid you not, this 12 minute old child drank 2 oz of milk in less than 2 minutes and they had to open another bottle for her. And praise the Lord she came out so hungry, because her blood sugar came up from that alone and she never had to get a sugar IV and, though we watched it closely, her blood sugar never went low again.

I got her back again before my doctors were even done stitching me up. And yet again I found myself holding my newborn baby. Surely the most precious feeling in all of the world? When my doctors got done with me we immediately facetimed my mom. I remember so well….. She answered and her and my dad were in our bed with Hadassah in between them. Tears were streaming down my face and I said, “Mom, I’m holding her! I’m holding her! It was so hard. But, mom, I’m holding her!” My mom and dad got to see her on FaceTime for a minute and so did Hadassah. But the conversation was very quick, there was still lots going on in the delivery room, so we had to hang up quickly. But I knew my mom would know the joy of me getting to hold Rahab in the room right there, something I didn’t get to do with Hadassah. And I wanted to share that moment with my mom so badly.

Lydia, instead of going to school that day, had came to the hospital to wait for Rahab to arrive. Jordan went out to the waiting room to bring her in to meet her birthday buddy. It was Lydia’s 18th birthday. And while it doesn’t seem like a big deal to miss school, if you know our responsible and studious Lydia, it actually is a pretty big deal that she chose to go sit in a waiting room by herself on her birthday rather than go to class.

Later that morning Rahab got to meet her nana and papa and her big sister, Hadassah. It was a precious day filled with smiles, tears, laughing, hugs, snuggles, kisses, gratefulness, and a little bit of jaundice, light blankets, light beds, and home health….. but this story is too happy to talk about all that right now. And it’s already too long, too. So, bummer, we will have to leave that little twinge of sadness for another time. 😉

That night Jordan and I had a lovely night together with just our new baby (and some coffee cheesecake from the cheesecake factory). We praised God for bringing us through fire and through water. And we praised God for bringing us out to a place of abundance. We snuggled up on that little bitty hospital bed that night, knowing as much as we could ever know, that God is with us and faithful and loving on the saddest days of our lives, and on the happiest day of our life, too.

Happy birthday, Rahab Mercy. You are a big mercy, and we wouldn’t want to do life without you.

Love,

Mom