Meet Valerie Werner

Parents Kimberly and Colin Werner hold their new daughter, Valerie, who was born at 12:45 a.m. at Virginia Baptist Hospital on Thursday.

By: Sarah Watson | The News & Advance
Published: January 02, 2009

There’s one thing you don’t want to hear from your pregnant wife at 11:40 p.m. on New Year’s Eve: “I think my water broke.”

About one hour later, Kimberly Werner gave birth to Lynchburg’s first baby of 2009 — a 7-pound, 6-ounce girl named Valerie. “There wasn’t time for an epidural,” Werner said. “So we had to do it au naturale.”

Valerie is the third child born to Werner and father Colin in about three years. Her sisters arrived in a much calmer fashion, the couple said Thursday.

“She’s saying, ‘I’m number three! I had to make an entrance’,” Kimberly Werner, 28, said.

The Werners were watching a basketball game Wednesday night, when Kimberly’s water suddenly broke. She wasn’t due for another two and a half weeks, she said.

Thankfully, she said, her mother was in town to help — mild contractions began Tuesday — so the Werners could jump in their Jeep and race to the hospital.

“It was very lucky for us she was here, because at 11:40 we’re tearing out the door,” Kimberly Werner said. “If she hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have had time to call anybody to come and watch our girls. We would have had to drag them out of bed or waken one of our neighbors.”

Colin Werner, 30, said he made the normally 10-minute drive to Virginia Baptist Hospital in about six minutes. He said he was calm during his first two daughter’s births, but Valerie’s arrival was stressful.

“Last night was a little rough, seeing you in a lot of pain,” he told his wife, who was holding a sleeping Valerie.

The Werner’s other two girls — 2 ½-year-old Sydney and 14-month-old Adrian — were brought by Kimberly’s parents to see their new sleeping sister around noon Thursday.

Werner works for Liberty University while Kimberly, a former first-grade teacher at Heritage Elementary School, is a stay-at-home mom.

The hospital presented the Werners with a bassinet overflowing with donated baby supplies. The New Year’s fuss was unexpected and appreciated, the Werners said. “When you think, too, of the second and third child, they don’t give you a shower,” she said. “This is the shower right here!”

Now with a family of three girls, Colin Werner said, “Everyone asks, so you have these girls, are you going to try for a boy?

“We’re like, no, not for a while if at all,” he said. “If not, we’re happy. We have three beautiful girls.”