Ericka: I think I assume that my pregnancy would be just completely awful.
Randy: See I thought the opposite, I always thought that because Ericka is very tough. She’s very athletic. She’s very competitive. I just had a feeling that your body would take well to it.
Ericka: Hello anybody, my name is Ericka, this is my husband Randy. But the real star of the family is this little girl right here Jocelyn Grear Burcolder. She was born about four days ago on Halloween. She’s our little pumpkin and she’s not crying for you today. Isn’t that nice?
I don’t know, I thought that I would just really be uncomfortable for the whole nine months but that really wasn’t the case. I loved it. I loved gaining weight. I loved that knowing that she was there. I loved everything about it.
The last few weeks though, that wasn’t easy.
Randy: It was just stressful because as we’re getting to the point where the baby is going to come, very time we would go see the doctor. They’re saying that it's just small. The measurements are small. You're always waiting for that next piece of news and we’re kind of waiting to see you know they were telling us at a certain point if the numbers don’t get better, we’re going to have to do an induction—
Ericka: C section.
Randy: Yeah because they want to hit that point where they think the baby is better outside than in.
Ericka: I was five centimeters dilated and 90% effaced at my last visit. And because the doctor said there could be complications with you know, they worry about her growth. He had suggested that I’d be induced sooner rather than later. And I negotiated with my doctor and said “can I come in for a procedure called stripping the membrane and if nothing happens then I will get induced on Monday”.
The doctor said that I was five centimeters dilated and 90% effaced and how can I be walking around like this when they were like “we want you to go to the hospital and we want to break your water”.
We were both really concerned. Randy is like “really Ericka, ask her why that’s necessary”. So I said “doctor, why is that necessary?” “And because I'm concerned you're going to deliver in your living room”. So I basically called them and said “we’re going to the hospital”.
Randy: So after they broke Ericka’s water, we waited to get the contraction started and we tried to walk her around to see what was going to happen on its own.
Ericka And they came, they came strong. I didn’t have any of that. “Oh here is a contraction here” and then an hour later, another contraction. It was basically one minute apart, that was the beginning and then they went almost I thought like there wasn’t a break and then it started getting really tough.
Randy: Yeah, meanwhile the Pitocin level is going up and they’re trying to speed things up so she’ getting more and more Pitocin and she wasn’t getting any more of the epidural that kind of balanced out the pain. So, that last hour of contraction when you eventually got to nine, that hour from nine until 10 was pretty painful.
Ericka: Yeah, we should bring—I had what, eight people in the labor and delivery room? All with fantastic paninis and cookies and breads eating while I couldn’t eat. Finally my doctor, cleared them all out and Randy basically got me from nine to 10 centimeters like I really could not have done it without him. He basically coached me through the hardest part of the whole entire pregnancy. And then 10 centimeters and—
Randy: And then baby came out about half an hour later. So I was very surprised that the baby is starting to come out. You see a little bit and a little bit more, a little bit more and she finally kind of did like a little spiral out. And as they caught her, I was just in complete shock to see this little girl is like—it was amazing. It was an amazing experience.
And it made a lot more fun because I’d spend all the time thinking about the things that you do with a little boy and picturing the boy and growing up and everything. And I get to do it all over again when I found out that it was a girl. That was fun.
Ericka: There is so much of Randy that I hope that she has. I want her to be confident. One thing that I love that you do is that you never give up. If there is a problem that needs to be solved, he doesn’t walk away from it. He is just persistent and he enjoys the challenge and I hope that she has that.
Randy: One thing I'm very happy about for Jocelyn is that she does have her mom, our little model. She follows her heart. She goes after her dreams and you want that. You want her to have the courage to be able to do that for herself too.
Ericka: We want to pass on what we know, what we don’t want to stop her from being who she is.
Randy: Yeah, you hope that you can just try to help them get through some of the harder things and then you can teach them to be strong, to be confident and be who they are. And that feel fine on their won way and they’ll pick and choose the things that they want to do and be the person that they can be.
A direct quote, not long after she had been through the whole delivery process, one of the first things she said was, if the rest of them are going to be this easy, I'll keep having babies.
Ericka: So the answer is yes, we definitely are going to have more babies and soon. It was all worth it.