Sawyer was born on December 18,2006 after a 42 hour labor. Sounds fun doesn't it! It all started on December 17, it was my little sisters 21st birthday, so everyone had gone out late on the 16th to be able to buy her a drink at 12:01am on the 17th. I being 9+ months pregnant chose to stay home with all the sleeping kids. At the time Jeremy and I shared 2 bedroom house with my sister Maria in Seattle, it had an unfinished basement that we used as a guest room. That night there were 5 kids 1 teenager, and 7 adults planning on staying in our house. When everyone got back home somewhere between 2am and 3am (after the bars had closed) I woke up to the sound of drunk people trying to get themselves situated for sleeping. If you have been pregnant or with someone pregnant you probably have experienced the annoyed pregnant woman situation. I was grumpy one to be woken up, two because it sounded like my sister was going to vomit in her room, and all I could imagine was me cleaning it up in the morning! I got up finally to make sure everyone was ok and as soon as I stood up my water broke!
So all the chaos took a back seat for a moment, I forgot why I was so grumpy grabbed my hospital bag, my husband, and my older sister who seemed sober enough to be supportive, and off we went. I was checked in a little after 4am when by 6am contractions had not started on there own I was put on an iv of pitocin, which is a drug that forces your body to have contractions. I was 1 centimeter dilated...10 centimeters seemed a long way off! Basically that was one of the longest days of my life, nothing really changed all day, I was being forced to have contractions and 24 hours later when my Dr. came to check on me I was still 1 centimeter dilated. Now it's 8am on the 18th, after my Dr. checks me he asks me if I want him to break my water....UMMM what? I explain that it had already broken, which is how I ended up in this place. By the way when you go to the hospital and say your water has broken they test some of the water to make sure you have actually broken your water and not just peed on yourself, my test showed my water had broken. Oh he says well the water bag is still intact, sometimes it just shifts he says and never releases all the fluid, I'll go ahead and re-break it. How the 3 other doctors that had seen me in the last 24 hours hadn't noticed this I don't know, but he broke my water and all I can say is damn that hurt! Within 4 hours I had gone from a 1 to a 8 centimeters dilated. I felt like I had been hit by a Mac truck. All the hours of pitocin that I had received all of a sudden kicked in. I wasn't able to open my eyes for about an 2 hours because of the pain. It felt like 30 minutes tho, I was surprised to see so much time had gone by. I finally smartened up and asked for an epidural, once that was done, I felt human again! A little after 3pm they finally said I was ready to start pushing. I pushed for just under 3 hours. I never understood how this was possible, but when you are on an epidural your body doesn't have the natural urge to push so you have to push a lot longer. But at 5:45pm on the 18th of December, I remember I was starting to see the beginning of sunset out the hospital window, Sawyer Jeremy arrived in my life. Right after he came out they took him to the heat lamp, he had come out with the cord wrapped around his neck and they wanted to check him out. My sister went over, I had not seen him yet, I asked what does he look like? The first description I ever got still fits to this day "Well she says I hope you like what his daddy looks like, 'cause he looks just like him!" He weighed 8 pounds 5 ounces was 21 inches long and was the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen.
I'm sure there are ways this birth could have gone better, I'm sure there are ways it could have gone worse, but after the longest day of my life, all I saw was the most perfect thing ever. Until you meet your child for the first time, it's hard to truly understand how much you can love someone.
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