Mar 21 2009
Benjamin Sawyer Ottley
I looked back in my archives and I had never posted Sawyer’s birth story, so here it is:
WARNING: This is a TMI (too much information) post! It is also kind-of gruesome and scary. Enter at your own risk.
When I was pregnant with Sawyer, I went into labor at almost 34 weeks. Jared rushed me to the hospital and the doctor started tocolytics and magnesium sulfate. They were able to get my labor stopped by the time I reached 4 cm. I had to stay in the hospital on the anti-labor meds for several days before my doctor finally let me go home on strict bedrest. I went in for a check-up the next week on March 15th. By that point I was just over 35 weeks. My doctor was running really behind with his appointments that day and so his nurse-midwife checked me. I knew immediately that something was wrong when I saw the look of horror on her face. I started to sit up when she said, “No! Don’t sit up! Lay down and don’t move!” She ran out of the room to get the doctor and I burst into tears. I grabbed my phone to call Jared who had taken the kids down the road to lunch while they waited for me. I said that I didn’t know what was going on but that he needed to get right back to the doctor’s office. The doctor came rushing into the room and I said, “Could somebody please tell me what is going on?” He explained that when the nurse-midwife checked me she felt both of the baby’s feet out in my almost fully dilated cervix and that I was starting to bleed. Umm, yeah. I had no clue. Before I left the hospital 5 days earlier, an ultrasound showed the baby head down. I never felt him do a full body flip. Nor did I feel like I was in labor. They did a quick ultrasound which showed that the placenta was rupturing. Nice. I was supposed to deliver at a hospital that was just a couple of minutes from the doctor’s office. I said, “So should Jared drive me right over to the hospital?” The doctor said that no way was I getting in a car. So I asked if I would go by ambulance. He said, “No, we’re going to have to do this here.” His office is adjacent to another hospital that my insurance didn’t cover. He said, “It does in life and death situations.” At that point, it hit me just how serious and scary this situation was. Jared had the 4 kids with him so the doctor said to take them to someone quickly while he scrubbed in and while I was being prepped for surgery. Jared made it back just in time for the birth of Benjamin Sawyer Ottley. After Sawyer’s birth, the doctor told us no more babies. He’d had to do a T-incision to get Sawyer out as he was in a very awkward angle and my uterus was in bad shape. He told us that my uterus ended up having to be stitched up like a baseball. The chance of it rupturing with a future pregnancy was high (see Parker’s birth story). In addition to all the extra stitches on the inside, he’d had to cut an exterior incision twice as long as a normal incision in order to get everything inside fixed. The c-section recovery was painful and rough. I was used to easy recoveries. This was a whole different ballgame. I spent the first 3 days in a complete haze of painkillers. Despite the horrible and early birth, Sawyer was so healthy! He was just perfect. Sawyer weighed 6 pounds even and had a nice head of light brown hair. He was so adorable (and still is!).
Sawyer was teeny tiny his whole first year of life. I was reading back through my blog and at 2 1/2 months he was only 7 pounds. But as soon as he hit his first birthday, he started catching up and growing in leaps and bounds. I can’t believe he is 3 now! He is such a happy boy. He loves to cuddle, talk on the phone, play with his siblings (especially his best friend Olivia), play with Giz, help Mommy, wrestle with Daddy, and play outside. He looks just like his Grandpa McGrath. He is a smarty pants and has an amazing vocabulary. We are so blessed to have him in our family. I love you, SoyBoy!
