Clark William Lee

Karina had contractions starting at 4:30 am on July 26th. The contractions were about thirty minutes apart. She woke me up around 7 and her contractions were approximately. 10 or 15 minutes apart. We slowly started getting ready to go, not hurrying, thinking we'd wait until she was around 7 minutes apart. Suddenly she started having them about 5 minutes apart and we finally got out the door to take the kids to Linda at the Valley View church building...we got there at around 9:15am. Then Kim, Karina and I drove to the Kaiser hospital in Irvine.

Arrived at the hospital around 10am. Once we arrived in the hospital, Karina was taken into a preliminary room to check how dilated she was and to ask her all the normal hospital questions like what allergies do you have and stuff. They finally tested out her cervix and the intern nurse said she was pretty sure but not perfectly sure that she was dilated to an 8cm. Karina said her pain level was a 5 out of 10 and that she was at approximately max pain tolerance.


We kept telling the nurses that we wanted an epidural, and NOW would be best please, or as soon as possible, anticipating that it was going to get really painful really fast. Sure enough, we'll see that it did.


The nurses said that she had to have an IV and that the full one liter of liquid had to drip through before the epidural. So they got the IV in pretty quick and they were really nice about saying that they were trying to expedite all the processes, for example turning the IV on max drip speeds.


After the IV was in, we moved her into the big room where she would have the baby. After only a few minutes, she started to have really bad contractions and started crying. She got to the point after about 15 minutes that she really couldn't take it anymore. The nurse informed her that the Epidural doc would come in 45 minutes since that's how long until her IV would drip the full 1 liter. Instead though, Karina showed signs of extreme pain by yelling, crying, and saying "I can't do this". The nurses tried their hardest to make her feel ok, telling her to focus on her breathing and that she's doing great. Karina asked Kim and me to pray that she could handle the pain, and get the epidural safely without moving too much. At one point Karina cried out "heavenly father help me! Take away my pain for just five minutes, please I’m begging you!!!" and she kept begging. It was pretty sad, Kim was crying. I was not crying but it was pretty sad to see her like that. When she said, "just five minutes please god" I kinda chuckled a little bit and she responded "I’m serious, please". I laughed because I thought, why not ask for like 30 minutes or a couple of hours. She was really that desperate to get relief from this pain.


Anyway, the nurses clearly were able to expedite the process since only after 10 minutes from the time the nurse said "45 minutes" did they tell her that the epidural doc was outside the room. Also the nurse said the liter hadn’t gone through and they were going to move forward with it anyway. Unfortunately he, the epidural doc heard Karina yelling and he was saying that he didn’t want to do it because she is just going to have the baby. He wanted the nurses to check if she was a 10 already and they were like, no, just do the epidural, she needs it and Karina said "I don't need to push, I need the epidural". He said that if she moved, there would be problems, and he didn’t want to do it if that was going to be the case. He also started talking about how the epidural isn’t going to do much if she's just going to be having the baby in 10 minutes. The nurses and Karina insisted that she needed the medicine so please continue. He finally started working. Kim left the room. Karina sat up, leaning into the bosom of the nurse.


The epidural doc took forever to do his thing and a couple of times he would just stop and go on about how safety is the most important thing. We agreed with him but he went on and on about how he treats everyone the same way, whether you're the president of the world, or his close family member, he was going to do the same thing and go through the same process. It was just a lot of unnecessary and not comforting words that was just annoying Karina and the nurses. We laughed with the nurses afterward and they totally agreed that he was a little too much talk and not enough action. He was a dainty little man, probably in his late 30s.

The epidural took way longer than it normally does, or seems like it should because the doctor was so afraid of Karina moving, and really messing herself up. Alternatively, he’s just a slow doctor.  Before the doctor came in, Karina was writhing in pain, literally rolling around the bed and grabbing the bars on the side and screaming and yelling and just really panicking, all around. God really helped Karina and answered our prayers with the epidural, she was able to sit almost perfectly still for literally 15 minutes which really couldn’t have happened without divine intervention. We are so thankful that Heavenly Father helped her through that process, especially since we were powerless to help her.

The epidural was in at 11:30am. After the epidural Karina was super happy and Kim came back in. Karina's IV fell out while shifting around so they put another one in.

After the epidural

At 12:30 they broke Karina's water and she started pushing at 12:36. Karina didn't have too much pain but she did feel pretty tired and uncomfortable. Karina did feel the delivery portion more so than with Savannah and Sterling. This time she really felt some of that pain and pressure from the baby physically coming out. When Clark’s head finally came out, the nurse told Karina to rest…but she could feel his shoulders still in there and she just laid back and pushed him out. They were a little surprised and were just kinda like, “um, ok, there he is!” Karina is happy she did that because she said, “I felt instant relief” when she did that. At 1:00pm Clark William Lee was born.  20 inches, 7lbs. 10oz.Karina only pushed for 25 minutes, but it kinda felt like longer than the other kids because Karina had a little bit more pain than usual. Sometimes I wonder about these statements because it’s easy to remember pain in the short term and easy to forget pains felt long ago. I mean, also this time we forgot to push the button on the epidural to make more medicine come out. After the baby was born, the nurse came over and pushed the button in preparation for the delivery of the placenta…but we were like, “oh my gosh, forgot about the stupid button!” That was a nice reminder after the fact….wow.


The nurses and midwife and all the staff were really nice, friendly, helpful, informative, and light-hearted. We really loved the experience, the service was amazing and nobody was afraid to talk with us, tell us what's going on, and crack a little joke here and there. It was pretty fun, despite the uncomfortability of the situation. Karina again had a level 2 tear and got sewed up.


Clark is adorable. He doesn't cry too much, he's pretty happy so far (writing this at 3pm). He has cute little feet, and loves to look at you when you talk to him. We can't wait to tell our other kids, and show him off! Sterling will be so jealous. Savannah may be sad it's not a girl...I hope she loves him just the same.

 Clark and Grandma

 Clark and Nana