Sawyer's Birth Story

A short version of the story illustrates how crazy fast Sawyer's birth was. The nurses made it clear that it was unreal for it being my first baby.

8:45 am Water broke and immediate contractions
9:30 am Checked into the hospital at a dilation of 4
11:00 am Received the epidural, was dilated to a 10 and ready to go
11:54 am Started pushing
1:11 pm Our baby was here

That made labor and delivery a total of 4 1/2 hours. Fast and furious. 

The longer version only includes the part of Christmas day because I'm convinced that my body was making major preparations that day. It wasn't actually part of my labor but I want to remember it all. Without further ado, Sawyer's birth story...

On Christmas morning I woke up around 2:45 am to some unpleasant contractions. I got up to use the bathroom and experienced other obvious indicators of upcoming labor. I started timing my contractions and they were consistently 7 minutes apart with the exception of the first few. I waited for about an hour and then decided to wake Dillon up.

"Don't freak out, but we may be having a baby today. I'm not sure how fast things will speed up so I vote we do Christmas presents now."

Dillon and I opened presents and checked out our stockings. Meanwhile, contractions kept coming at 7 minutes. They were unpleasant but not extreme yet. Dillon went back to sleep for a little while and I packed our hospital bags (cue the procrastination remorse). 

Around nine o'clock we decided to head to my parents house to do our present exchange with them. Contractions were still 7 minutes apart and hadn't gotten any worse. While at my parents, contractions slowed down and became very sporadic- 20 minutes, 6 minutes, 45 minutes. We relaxed with family and took it easy. By the time we returned home, around 5 o' clock in the afternoon, contractions were only showing up once an hour. The next morning they were completely gone. 

I didn't experience any pains or labor signs during the following day and started to think that maybe our little man was going to stay put for a while after all. Then things got real.

December 27th I woke up close to 7:30 in the morning and decided to start making breakfast for Dillon and myself. I threw a load of laundry in the washer and went about getting breakfast made. While cooking, I started to feel like I might throw up which was not uncommon for me during this trimester. I tried to hold it in but my body was having none of that. At 8:45 I turned to the kitchen sink as I didn't have time for anything else and threw up, hard. With every convulsion of my stomach, a gush of water ran down my legs. For a few seconds, I wasn't sure what in the world was going on but then I connected the dots and realized my water was breaking. As I cleaned up some, I noticed there was a green tinge to the water which I knew wasn't a good sign and meant there was meconium in there with our baby.

I woke Dillon up and let  him know it was the real deal this time. My contractions were coming every two minutes and they.were.mean. We took a little time to gather last minute things and put on actual clothes/get ready. We got in the car and I've never been more thankful that the hospital is only 7 minutes from our house. Three contractions sitting in the car was enough.

At 9:30 we walked into labor and delivery (me taking breaks along the way as I couldn't even walk through the contractions anymore) and checked in. I know the pain was making me more ornery than usual but oh the front desk nurse almost made me lose it. She seemed almost bored checking me in and took her time. "Who is your provider?" "How do you spell your name?" (Any freaking way you want lady!).

I got changed into a gown and paced the room waiting for the nurse to come in. Nurse Cynthia walked in with an exclamation of, "You don't look happy." Polite chuckle from me on the outside...screams of, "I hate you!" on the inside. (Not fair, I know. She ended up being a really great nurse.)

She had me sit on the bed which brought on a new level of hurt and checked me. "Well you're at about a 4/5 so you're a keeper." (Hallelujah!) First words out of my mouth, "That means I'm good for the epidural, right?" Because I knew from our prenatal class that 4 is usually the magic number to be okayed for an epidural. She smiled and let me know that was in fact the case and they'd let the anesthesiologist know. 

Nurse Cynthia went about getting things ready- my IV so they could get a platelet count for the epidural (which wouldn't give enough blood but thankfully the phlebotomist popped in and took it from a different spot), a few basic questions etc. My contractions were turning me into a noisy whimperer and being told to breathe through them almost sent me through the roof. Thankfully Dillon was there to let me squeeze his hand and to provide sympathetic expressions.

Around 10:30, nurses switched so I had Nurse Carolyn (a woman I've known my whole life and was from my home ward---I thought it would be weird but I was so glad she was there, along with Phyllis who came later.) She walked over and gave me the best, comforting hug. I had a few more miserable contractions and rather than just telling me to breathe she simply told me in a soothing tone that she was sorry that I was hurting so much (that is how it's done folks). She then mercifully suggested Fentanyl to help with the pain while I waited for the epidural. They plugged that into my IV and I still definitely felt the contractions but I wasn't whimpering anymore (all hail Fentanyl).

Close to 11:00 Carolyn helped me get into position for the epidural and talked me through how best to situate the curve of my back to make it easy for the anesthesiologist. My favorite person walked in and gave me basic step-by-step information on what he was doing as he was doing it. The initial place he chose wasn't working out after he gave me the numbing shot and I panicked for a brief moment thinking I wasn't going to be able to have the medicine at all. It was all okay though because he picked a spot one vertebrate up to try and it worked just fine. 

The relief I felt as the epidural started taking effect was unreal. There was literally zero pain. I was a normal person again who didn't feel like shooting daggers at any nurse that dared smile at me. 

Carolyn checked me again and let out a, "Oh, you're complete. She's complete!" (Say, wha?) My body doesn't mess around. I had gone from a 4 to a 10 in an hour and a half. All of the sudden the room was busy; people in and out bringing equipment and prepping. Then Carolyn checked the monitors and the room was busy with people muttering and being concerned. They called the anesthesiologist back to give me a shot of Ephedrine. Apparently, my blood pressure had dropped, like 70 over 40 (I think that's what I heard them muttering) dropped and that made the baby's heart rate drop. My body was digging the epidural a little too much. This made sense because I started seeing stars about the time Carolyn checked the monitors. But they were so quick with the Ephedrine (which causes blood vessels to contract, or in other words do the opposite of the epidural according to the anesthesiologist) and giving me oxygen that I bounced back quickly and so did the baby.

Dr. Gatherum came in to check me and decide if it was time for pushing. Sure enough, things were ready and I started pushing at 11:54. 

After the first few sets of pushes, my contractions weren't showing up on the monitor anymore. I was still having them but this made things difficult because I couldn't feel them and they couldn't see them to tell me when to push. They set up some other equipment that monitors contractions from the inside and we got back on track. After pushing for a while, Dr. Gatherum left and had Carolyn stay with me. She had me turn on my side to push because the baby didn't seem to be particularly enjoying things with me on my back. Dr. Gatherum came back and I pushed on my back again for a while. We repeated this cycle a couple of times. Toward the end I started being able to feel when I was having contractions; not so it hurt but I was aware of the pressure. Looking back, this made me grateful that things happened so quickly because I had gotten the epidural only two hours before and it was starting to wear off already. 

At 1:11 p.m. I gave my final set of pushes and Sawyer was here and crying as they laid him on my stomach and cleaned him off. Dillon kept saying he couldn't believe how purple he was. I think Dr. Gatherum got a kick out of that. Dillon was pressured into cutting the cord; something he had already told me he didn't want to do and I was fine with that. But the nurses and Dr. Gatherum weren't taking no for an answer and Dillon took care of it. He told me later it wasn't actually as bad as he pictured it.

While Dr. Gatherum finished taking care of me, Dillon and I smiled at our new little family member that had made it into the world. He was so new and so were we, in our own way. And now that he's here, it's like he was always meant to be with us. 

Welcome Sawyer. You're loved more than you know.

Sawyer Dustin Thatcher
Arrived 1:11 pm December 27th, 2014
7 lbs 11 oz
20 1/2 inches long