Father delivers impatient baby on side of road
Tim and Melissa Fitzpatrick share their special delivery on TODAY
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Father delivers baby in snowstorm Dec. 6: While en route to the hospital Melissa Fitzpatrick went into labor forcing husband Tim to deliver the newborn in the car. They spoke to TODAY’s Ann Curry. Today show |
Tim Fitzpatrick isn’t called “The Mailman,” but he should be. When his pregnant wife told him their daughter refused to wait until they got to the hospital to enter the world, he delivered.
Tim and Melissa Fitzpatrick’s adventure in special delivery took place on Dec. 2, 11 days before Kiley Rose Fitzpatrick was due to be born and a half hour before they could get to Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center in La Crosse, Wis., for the birth.
On Thursday, the Fitzpatricks joined TODAY’s Ann Curry from La Crosse to show off Kiley Rose and talk about how it all came about.
It had actually started in the early morning, when Melissa felt she was going into labor and she and her husband packed their 3-year-old son, Hunter, off to Grandma and Grandpa’s and drove to the hospital.
But after 10 hours of waiting and no real labor pains, their doctor sent them home, figuring it was just false labor.
They took a nap, and Melissa got up to take a bath later that afternoon. When Tim heard her pounding on the bathtub, he realized she had gone into real labor.
“My first labor with Hunter went quite fast - four hours” Melissa told Curry. “So we knew we had to get there as soon as I started having contractions. And we did, but we didn’t make it there.”
They live about an hour from the hospital, and snow and freezing rain had made the roads slick, forcing Tim to drive slowly. About halfway to the hospital, Melissa gave Tim the exciting news that her water had broken and maybe it would be a good idea to call the hospital.
Tim had barely been connected to their obstetrician when Melissa gave another progress report: the baby’s head was out and she really felt the need to push.
She was calm. Tim, who works in communications and is a volunteer firefighter, confesses to being a nervous and emotional wreck.
“I don’t know exactly what was going through my mind,” he said. “As soon as the doctor said I had to deliver the baby, my heart started immediately racing.”
He had pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road and put on his emergency flashers before getting out and going around to his wife’s side of the car. He figured the temperature was in single digits when he opened the door.
“The first thing I saw was my little daughter’s head,” he said. “The doctor said, ‘You have to pull the baby out.’ I said, ‘How do I do this? I’ve never done it before.’ ”
He also was trying to pull and talk on the phone. Melissa suggested it might be better if she took the phone and relayed instructions to him.
Fortunately for Tim, Kiley Rose was not a shy baby, but was rushing onto the stage. “I go to grab the baby’s head, Melissa pushed, and the baby came out,” Tim said.
He knew from his firefighter training how to clear the infant’s airway, and when she delivered her first wail, he put her on his wife’s chest to keep her warm. That’s when the doctor informed him that his work wasn’t done: he still had to tie off the umbilical cord.
The doctor asked if they had a shoelace, and Tim pulled one off his wife’s shoe and tied the cord off.
Hospital staff had already called 911, so all that was left was to get back into his side of the car, crank the heat up to keep mother and infant warm, and break down crying, overcome with the emotional event.
“I’m very grateful for what he did,” Melissa said. “I was actually pretty calm. I knew that my body was able to do it, so I was just hoping that it all would work out well and the baby would be okay. I just needed Tim’s help and support, and it worked out well.”
Melissa rode an ambulance with Kiley Rose to the hospital, while Tim followed in the car. The girl who couldn’t wait to be born checked out perfectly – 19 inches long and 6.12 pounds.
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