Why hello friends! Thank you for all the congrats / tweets / Fb messages on Sawyer’s arrival. We have been busy just enjoying each other. I cannot believe he is already 6 days old and is changing so much already.
He can roll over to his side, hold his neck for nearly 5 seconds, and move his head from left to right when laying on my chest.
Based on his birth weight and abilities, I’m sort of convinced he was actually due December 1st versus December 26th!
The last part of pregnancy was somewhat rough. Not because of the pregnancy itself, but because of the waiting and not knowing what day he’d make his arrival. I was so convinced I would have him a week early so each day that passed, I got a wee bit more depressed. I’m not sure why, but I just felt like I was ready and had completely lost control of the situation.
Each night I’d go to bed with hopes of a mid-night wake up call from a bursting water bag or painful contractions. But nope. Nada.
My in-laws arrived on Monday the 26th and, by then, my Mom had been here for 5 days, all anxiously waiting.
I recall sitting playing Banangrams (awesome game, btw) early Monday evening and having a slight sensation of a ‘trickle’ (warning: graphic details pending…). Since I had a fairly heavy discharge throughout pregnancy, especially towards the end, I wasn’t sure if it was just that. I certainly felt no ‘gush’ or ‘steady clear liquid’ that are the supposed tell-tale signs of your water bag breaking. So I ignored it.
About 2am on the 27th, I felt what I thought could be my first contractions. I don’t know that I ever felt Braxton Hicks. I certainly had some cramping throughout pregnancy, but no ‘tightening’ like is described with contractions, until that early Tuesday AM. They were somewhat consistent, but not really painful. Just different. When I woke up that morning, they pretty much had went away and I was pretty darn disappointed. Clearly my baby never was going to arrive.
Mid-Tuesday AM, we took a 3+ mile walk to/from Starbucks before getting ready and going about our day.
While running random errands with all our visitors, I felt my tummy tighten every now and then for distinct periods of time. It was hard as rock in all areas, not just where his booty usually was. Since everything was fairly irregular I ignored it once again.
That evening we went for Thai food. I mean why not just keep trying every trick in the book to get Baby O out!
After eating and taking our dog for a walk, I felt that trickle-feeling again along with some tightening so I called the Labor & Delivery advice nurse at about 830p. She said it sounded suspicious and to come in and bring our bags as if we were staying. Oh boy, I really hoped this wasn’t another false alarm.
I was soon hooked up to the monitors and it appeared I was indeed having contractions about 8 minutes apart. I didn’t really feel them, but they were there. They did not check to see if I was dilated just in case my water bag had broke (they don’t want to introduce possibility of infection).
The nurse did a quick pH test and saw no amniotic fluid, but the doctor wanted to take a larger sample. The first sample proved inconclusive as did the second. Finally around 1115p, the doctor declared they saw the crystalline structure indicative of amniotic fluid under the microscope and it was time to hook me up to some Pitocin. By this time I had thought my water may have broken at 8a that morning, but in reality, it was probably over 24 hours prior. Whoops! 
By 1145p I was fully admitted and hooked up to an IV and the Pitocin drip started. Contracts quickly became more regular – maybe at about 5 minutes, but I was in no pain and had no idea I was even having them most of the time.
A few hours in, I took up the offer for some Fentanyl so that I could get some sleep. I had been feeling a bit of that cramping feeling with contractions by this point (—the Pitocin dosage had been steadily increasing up to 20 units by this time (which is nearly the max dosage!)). The Fentanyl immediately took effect – super dizzying and zonked me right out.
At 530a, they checked my dilation. I was at 6cm! What?!?! How could that be? It was only a matter of hours since I was admitted and I hadn’t been feeling the pain I assumed I’d be at 6cm. But since I knew I wanted an epidural, I ordered one up so that I wouldn’t miss my opportunity.
Me at 6cm dilated, no pain, pre epi 
I was getting pretty worked up about having one – the idea of a needle in my back totally freaked me out. But I have to say, it was a cinch! Very very minimal pain – just a tiny pinch that felt warm, and then a slight sensation of the catheter moving inside me. It didn’t distribute evenly at first – my right side was quite numb but I could feel cold sensations on my left so we kept hitting the button to increase the dose every 15 minutes until I was adequately numb. I think this was around 730a.
At around 915a, they checked me again and I was 10cm! Holy moly, already!?!? Nuts! They did a check to see if I was able to push appropriately since my epi was so high and I had no problems (yay for using yoga muscles!). Because the baby’s head wasn’t dropped they wanted me to hold another hour to see if it would drop before we really started pushing.
At 1030a, I started pushing with the assistance of only my delivery nurse and Zach. She was so absolutely wonderfully fantastic and made the pushing a breeze. I had no feeling to tell you the truth so we relied on the monitors to tell me when I was going to have a contraction at which time I had to bear down for 10 seconds at a time, 3 times per contraction.
My experience was nothing like you see on TV. No screaming, no moaning, no groaning. Just very zen, easy, calm pushing. I assisted by holding my legs and the delivery nurse held the other. Eventually I tried side lying to see if that’d help move things along too. The delivery doctors would stop in periodically to check my progress.
Finally after nearly an hour of pushing, it was evident that lil Sawyer wasn’t going to get his head under the pelvic bone. They had put a monitor on his head and discovered a very low heart rate during my contractions. It was time to make decisions. First they wanted to try a vacuum pump to get him past the pelvic bone and if that didn’t work after a set number of tries, we’d have to go c-section. We quickly decided the vacuum was fine and wanted to start immediately.
So in came the Chief Resident and Attending along with the baby nurses and were were good to go!
Literally 2 contractions and a few pushes later, Sawyer was born!
They immediately laid him on my chest while cleaning him off and Zach and I just teared up and fell in love, while waiting for his little wail. He didn’t cry, but rather whimpered.
The only thing I remember is them saying, “oh my, what a BIG boy” before things slowly faded to black…
Oh yeah!
. All the attendings assured me that I did precisely the right thing and if anything happens like that again, to call and come in. That helped me feel a bit better.
