Sawyer's Birth Story

Meet Sawyer James Phelps, the newest man in my life. He came 3 weeks early (still full term) and weighed in at 4 lbs 15 oz after a 28 hour long emergency induction. That's right, 28...Hours...Long. 

My husband Chandler and I were living in Dallas, Texas and working with a fabulous hippie midwife. I'm pretty dang small, but she was smaller and she always sat in a wooden child's chair at our appointments. I don't think I ever saw her with shoes on. Our favorite moment with her was when she pulled out a flip book filled with encouraging phrases for women. She told us to open the book to a random page and whatever passage we fell on would be what we needed to hear. I got the normal fortune cookie passages that were along the lines of "You will receive a wonderful surprise in the next week", "You are a caring person", etc. Meanwhile, the already skeptical Chandler opened the book and landed the best passage in the whole thing: "You treat yourself like a goddess." Enough said.

To be honest, the whole point of me introducing my Dallas midwife could have been summed up in one simple sentence: for my 33-week appt. the baby measured 3 cm small. Okay, now we can move on. 

We moved back to Utah and I found a new group of midwives. At my first appt. (35 weeks), the midwife and I talked for over an hour about my birth plan and then she measured me. There had been no growth. Scratch that birth plan. They immediately got an ultrasonographer (bet you didn't know that's what they're called) to measure Baby more reliably and he found that Baby was in the bottom 3% of babies for size at that point of gestation. Immediately I became high risk and was sent to the hospital for more testing. 

The next two weeks were filled with appointment after appointment. A team of specialists determined him to be IUGR (intra-uterine growth restricted) and although the cause couldn't be determined, told me that I wouldn't be allowed to go past 38 weeks.

WHAT??!!

Being induced was really hard for me to accept. The first two lines of my birth plan stated that I wanted a natural birth with no medication and only natural methods of induction. It was time to think about extensive plan remodeling. I began researching induction methods and this is where I reveal the moral of this whole story: don't trust the internet.

Do you see that? It says DON'T TRUST THE INTERNET. 

I found website after website that shared the harmful side effects of medications that I knew I would have to get for the health of my baby since carrying him to the full 40 weeks could jeopardize his life, along with horror story upon horror story. I was given two possible dates for my induction and because of my online findings, I dreaded reaching them. 

Side track: Did you know that babies practice breathing in the womb? They don't need to breathe until birth, but their muscles can begin training weeks in advance. Cool, right?

Back on track: The first of the two dates came: July 29th. After measuring him at 4 lbs 5 oz, a good two pounds under the norm for 37 weeks, they sent me next door to the hospital for my induction and this is where I became immensely grateful that I had gone the midwife route. There I am, laying in the hospital bed and fighting tears as I worry about Baby and resign to let them induce me, turning what was already supposed to be the most painful experience of my life into an even more painful one when I'm 95% sure that the only reason Baby's measuring small is because my husband Chandler and I are small and I'm bombarded with questions from the well-intentioned nurses. I'm trying to get my brain to process it all when my heroine comes in, surveys the scene and excuses them, then takes a seat and asks "How are you doing?" The best part is that she didn't just ask me, but also Chandler who was often forgotten about during this whole ordeal. We talk to her for at least 30 min about what to expect and feel so much better afterwards. 

Here are the times to put this all in perspective: My appointment was at 2 pm. Hospital at 3 pm. Induction started at 4 pm. That's when they measured my cervix and since I was only 1/2 cm dilated, started me on the oral medication, Cytotec. Apparently lots of countries use it instead of Pitocin as studies have found it to carry fewer risks (Cytotec Study) so I wasn't too worried about this phase. Every 4 hours I got a dose until I was 1 cm dilated at about 8 am. The contractions were uncomfortable but I was able to sleep through a lot of them and when I was awake I could do my breathing exercises to manage them- in through the nose, out through the mouth, just like during any athletic event. 

Alarm, Alarm: During the night Chandler and I had a harsh wake up, Several nurses rushed in to put an oxygen mask on me after they realized that Baby's heartbeat had stopped for too long. By the time that I was able to fully wake up and register what had happened, his heartbeat was back. As scary as it was, it comforted us to know that the Baby was being watched so closely.

After about 4 hours of total sleep, I was woken up to get a Foley bulb which would help me dilate quickly to 5 cm - active labor and then they added the Pitocin. Let me tell you, things got real. 

Coping with the Pain 101:

1. When I had a bad contraction, the midwife would breathe out loud with me. As long as I focused all of my attention on matching her breathing, I could handle the pain. However, the pain did make me forget just about everything so I needed constant reminders, especially when she wasn't there. 

2. I began to see it as if it were a game my body initiated with my brain. Body- "For my part I'm going to use all my strength to freak out on you. If you can match my strength before giving up, you win." Twisted, I know. (According to my sister-in-law, I have this weird drive to make everything into some sort of competition. I'm pretty sure it comes from being a teacher and having to entertain competition loving kids all day, but either way, thinking this way helped.) 

3. My midwife reminded me that the contractions were trying to prepare my body for the delivery so I thought about each contraction as bringing me one step closer to having our little boy.

4. Distractions. This is where it got a little weird. Okay, maybe you thought it got weird a long time ago, but this is where I'll agree: my main distraction was watching episodes of 19 Kids and Counting. Seeing the happy Duggar family reminded me of what I was working for and that it would all be worth it. I mean, Michelle, the mom, went through this 19 times and is STILL excited to have more children! At one point, after the daughter-in-law had her baby, I even cried because it made me want ours so much. That desire was the best fuel I could have asked for. 

After a long, long 4 hours, the Foley bulb came out. Within minutes the contractions were literally half as painful and I could breathe my way through them relatively easily. The relief didn't last for long as they kicked up the Pitocin and broke my water (surprisingly painless), sending me back to the highest level of pain. Over the next two hours I stopped being able to process anything but the pain no matter what I did - laying in the tub, watching my show, or doing my breathing exercises.

Opinion time: Worst part of my labor - The shakes. One side effect of Pitocin that some people get is uncontrollable shaking. As in full body, unable to talk or think shakes. Mine happened frequently and exhausted me more than the contractions. Getting out of the tub, I got hit with a really bad case of the shakes and afterwards wasn't able to stand up on my own. That's when the epidural talk surfaced. The nurse and midwife left it up to me but said that for most people at my phase of labor, it actually sped up their labor and let them recover from the exhaustion. I decided to try it. 

I feel like I'm writing a whole new story now that the epidural has come into play. The pain went away completely. Completely. All I felt was a bit of internal pressure. I was able to catch a little sleep and within the next 3 hours dilated all the way to 10  cm. Goal achieved.  

Where in the dozens of articles that I read in preparation for childbirth did it say that epidurals could speed up labor?  No where. Where did it say that how dilated you are can make all the difference? No where. Yet every staff member I talked to, even big supporters of epidurals, told me that they weren't comfortable giving an epidural before at least 3 cm dilation. It was also unanimous that epidurals given more around the middle of labor often help, like they did for the patient next door. If I had known that during my pregnancy, I could have avoided multiple breakdowns as I faced the fear of labor. Every article was so polarized: if you want your baby to be healthy - be natural. If you don't want pain - get medication. If you want a healthy baby and no pain - don't get pregnant. To the articles' credit, Sawyer's birth was not standard and the staff shared that few women with my level of intervention made it as far as I did without an epidural, but still. Show all sides of an argument! 

I made a spur-of-the-moment change of decision when I started pushing and asked for a mirror. I didn't ever feel the urge to push, but the baby was in position so they coached me through it. Apparently they could already see his head and I wanted to see it too! Was there really a baby in there?! Seeing Sawyer's head gave me the motivation to keep pushing and seeing myself, although creepy (that's not my body!), reminded me of what muscles to use. At one point they asked me to stop pushing to prevent tearing and even with the epidural it was hard to stop. I can't imagine that I'd have been able to stop without it and would've experienced worse than a 1st degree. I was also able to focus on the miracle that was happening rather than the pain, and hardly felt the tear or stitches (neither during nor after the birth). 

As for the placenta, it came out without a push and was perfectly healthy, but a little small. The midwife thinks that may have been the cause of his small size, but it's still debatable as to whether I really needed to be induced. However, I won't complain about getting to deliver a small baby and getting to spend an extra 3 weeks with him. 

A study: There were two groups of people and the first was given a long, negative experience that ended with a short, positive experience. The second had a long, happy experience that ended with a short, negative experience. When asked about the experience as a whole, both groups focused on those last few minutes, whether good or bad. (My husband works with esteemed economists who discuss this type of thing over lunch.) 

I think that study demonstrates why women have multiple children: the last few minutes, when the baby is born, are incredible. I mean, pregnancy sucks. Labor sucks. But seeing Sawyer come into the world gave me feelings that I will never be able to find the words to appropriately express. No matter how advanced my vocabulary becomes, I will not be able to explain to someone how it felt to become a mother. This feeling, along with how I'd just conquered my most feared physical experience, was so strong that I actually felt excited to do it again! Okay, I admit that that is not a normal post-birth feeling, but either way I felt it. I'd never felt baby hungry before I was in labor, but when it hit me, it hit hard. Like, getting-hit-in-the-face-by-a-snowball-with-a-rock-in-it hard. 

I wanted my Sawyer and I wanted him now! And guess what? I'm still baby hungry which is the weirdest thing seeing as being mother to a newborn is hard, yet I've loved every part of it so much that I'm excited to do it again when we feel it's the right time.

The reason why I wrote this story was to warn everyone about investing too much merit in other people's stories because both your body and your baby are unique. It's easy for people to forget that just because something went a certain way for them, that it might go a different way for someone else. This is how my labor went, but I know that others in the same situation have had completely different results and I'm glad that's the case. 

This is my first post so if you made it all the way through, please comment and let me know that you did!