Over the past year, 7-time AQHA World and
Congress Champion, Stephanie Griffin, gave us her perspective and
insight on being pregnant for the first time while still trying to show
horses. Quite a lot has changed since we last heard from her. Will this
brand new mother find room in her life to balance both baby and horses?
Wow. How times flies! Last time I checked in I was six months pregnant and had
just traveled to Canada like a crazy woman to show at Summerama. That was also when I realized that someone else would do my horse more justice than I could, so I sold him pretty unexpectedly. As much as I love to show, I realized that I
would need to focus on being a mom and put showing on hold for a little while. So needless to say,
a lot has changed in the past year!
I missed going to the Congress for the first time since 1984 but being nine months pregnant does put things in perspective and I know there will be another Congress
next year, the year after that, and the year after that. I know that’s odd coming
from a former Congress Queen! I will tell you that after spending the entire
month of October there for work for the last several years, it did feel really
good to sleep in my own bed. Although I was about to pop so I can’t say I actually did much sleeping!
I had been experiencing horrible nausea in my third trimester and a doctor’s visit explained why…the baby was breech.
After all those ultrasounds in the first two trimesters, everything was going
so well that there wasn’t any reason to do any more. The ultrasound showed the
baby was 8 pounds 4 ounces and aside from being footling breech, everything
looked good. They arranged to admit me to the hospital the next morning to try
to turn him. My Oklahoma doctor had been very successful in turning breech babies, but
had never done one full term, so she prepared me for the possibility that it
might not be successful and/or could induce labor. She sent me home with
some exercises to try which I did a couple of times before deciding there was
no way this very large baby was going to do a complete somersault in my belly
that was already stretched to the limit and as hard as a basketball!
Shortly after going to bed, I noticed a strange pain and
then another a little while later. I had a feeling that they might have been
going on for awhile but just weren’t bad enough to make me take notice. I asked
my husband, Justin, to watch the clock to see how far apart they were, and after a
couple of false alarms the last couple of weeks, he was a bit skeptical. The
next one came and I looked at him and he said “Five minutes.” No big deal, I
thought, it’s probably nothing. The next one came and I looked at him, and
again he said, “Five minutes.” At that
point we were both getting a little more alarmed, especially since we live 30
minutes from the hospital and knowing that he was breech made me much more
nervous. Going in for a scheduled C-section after I had a little time to get
used to the idea was one thing, going into labor a few hours after just
discovering he couldn’t be delivered naturally was another. We gathered our
bags and headed to the hospital.
We arrived a little before midnight and the contractions were
pretty severe so they tried to slow down the labor to give the doctor time to
get there and see if she could turn him. After a couple of hours, it became apparent
that wasn’t working and they told us that we were going in for an emergency C-section. Jackson Thomas was born October 29th at 3:35 a.m. weighing 8 lbs. 4 ounces and was
21 inches long. The nurses and staff were wonderful
and once they told me that the sooner I was up and walking, the faster I could
go home. I immediately began doing laps.
They let us leave a mere 36 hours after we arrived which they said was a
hospital record. Yay! We went home to begin life with our new baby boy.
Just a week after Jackson
was born, I convinced Justin to drive us 150 miles to the World Show for our first outing
so we could watch my good friend Crosby Boyd in the finals of the amateur
pleasure. I was super excited to wear pre-pregnancy jeans for the first time in
several months. We arrived just as he was jogging into the arena and were able to
see him and his beautiful horse, Goodcowboy Margarita, win the Reserve World
Championship. My old retired mare, Scotch Margarita, now has a Reserve World Champion
grand baby! It was great to see people and Jackson
met a few of our friends before we decided to quit while we were ahead and go
home.
Fast forward six months later, my favorite thing in the whole world is to rock Jackson to sleep
each night. I think back to the years and years of showing when I couldn’t
imagine not being at a show every single weekend, and there’s nothing like holding
a baby in your arms to make you realize how not so important that all is in the
grand scheme of things. I am so grateful to have had all of those experiences
and to have spent so many years traveling from one end of the country to the
other for work and showing, but none of that compares to holding our baby in my
arms. The world just kind of stops and nothing else matters but the sweet sound
of his tiny breaths. We are so fortunate that he is a happy, healthy baby. Thanks
to a fabulous baby sitter, I went back to work when he was four weeks old. Luckily
all of the baby weight was also gone by then – nothing like taking care of a
baby to make you learn how to eat in 30 seconds or less!
Of course, I couldn’t stay away from showing forever and my urge to get back in the show pen was greater than I thought it would be. Thanks to a great opportunity to purchase a Congress Champion and two-time Reserve
World Champion halter mare, I will be able to show at the major shows without
having to make the major time commitment that goes along with riding. Special thanks to Jason Smith,
Linda Pigg and the Fuhrman family for bring FF Would Ya Look (aka Cherry) and me
together. I am excited for the next chapter of my show career to begin with my
pretty new gray partner! So far Jackson loves the horses and I can’t wait to
introduce him to Cherry. Careful what I
wish for, right?
