Morgan Sewell, our Moms on Call Certified Premier Consultant, shares the experiences of her pregnancy and preparing for a baby journey with us!
Morgan is located in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she was born and raised (Go Vols)! She is married to her high school sweetheart, Matthew, and they are raising their two beautiful girls, Mattie Faye (4) and Mabry (3 months). Morgan has over seven years of nursing experience in High-Risk Labor & Delivery, Antepartum, Mother/Baby, Primary Care, and Pediatrics. However, the greatest honor of her job is the opportunity to build a relationship with her patients and to walk alongside mothers and fathers as they welcome their little ones into their lives.
Pregnancy and preparing to welcome a new member of the family is likely the most special time in a woman’s life.
As a Labor & Delivery nurse and a mother of two girls, I know firsthand how stressful, yet at the same time wonderful, this season of life is for families.
My First and Second Pregnancy Journey
My pregnancy with my first daughter, Mattie Faye, was met with many fears and complications. After an infertility battle and surgery to remove a congenital uterine septum, I spent the entire first trimester battling “threatened miscarriage” (bleeding and cramping prior to 20 weeks of pregnancy). I later was diagnosed with an incompetent cervix and had an emergency cerclage placed at twenty-two weeks. Then, to further complicate things, I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Finally, due to my high-risk pregnancy leaving me on bed rest for much of my pregnancy, I had a lot of extra time. I ordered all the latest and greatest gadgets, read all the books, and made 1000 lists; I felt very prepared to welcome our first daughter into the family.
Flash forward to my second pregnancy, when various life circumstances left me scrambling at the last minute to even have a nursery put together the night before my induction of labor!
I went from one end of the spectrum to the other, from feeling overly prepared to feeling extremely underprepared.
Mabry’s pregnancy wasn’t high-risk, and due to that, chasing around a three-year-old and my husband changing jobs, I was not as focused on “making room for baby.” Instead, I kept thinking, “oh, I have plenty more time before she is born since I don’t have any risk factors.” Unfortunately, that mindset ended up leaving me an anxious mess when I was diagnosed with gestational hypertension at 37 weeks and was told I would need to be induced within the week.
Although there were many things with it being my second pregnancy that I felt more experienced in and, therefore, much less anxious about, there were a handful of other things that were uncharted territory.
Now, not only did I need to think about the new baby coming and my well-being, but also my older daughter. I spent the day before my induction cleaning and nesting like a mad woman, in a rough emotional state. How could I welcome this new baby into our family when I hadn’t even organized the nursery perfectly? Had I prepared Mattie Faye enough for what life as a big sister would be like? Had I ruined Mattie Faye’s life by having another baby? What would the girls wear since the matching “big sister/little sister” set that I ordered from Etsy hadn’t arrived yet? All of these and more were the questions circling in my head.
Ultimately, around 2 am the morning of my induction, I finally realized that this new baby girl would be joining our family very soon, whether the baseboards were dusted or not.
I started to reframe my thoughts on how wonderful it would be to see and hold her for the first time after trying to get pregnant for two long years. How special it would be to see Mattie Faye hold her baby sister, whom she had prayed for, for the first time. How amazing it would be to see Mattie Faye grow and mature into a big sister role.
I also realized that no matter if things felt "perfect" in my mind, really all that mattered was that this baby was coming home to a house filled with love. I knew our lives were about to change majorly, but I knew it was going to be a wonderful change. We would come together as a family to welcome this new little miracle, take care of her, and love her immensely.
Book Moms on Call Support with Morgan Sewell
Morgan has always had a call on her heart to one day assist in delivering and taking care of babies. As the years progressed, that call evolved into a strong desire to assist mothers and their partners during their pregnancies, deliveries, postpartum, and parenting journeys.
She believes that mothers and fathers need compassionate support so that they can confidently and purposefully make the best decisions for their families.
