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After having four children, my husband Jonathan and I had outgrown our tiny starter home and decided to move 60 miles away to be closer to family. We became pregnant again and were excited to be expecting our second daughter. However, things took a turn for the worse when, all of a sudden, I started bleeding heavily at 12 weeks.
Unfortunately, I was at a children’s museum with my other four children at the time, which was over an hour away from my OB/GYN. But since we were with other family members, I was able to leave my kids with them and drive myself to my doctor (my husband was at work), praying the whole time to not lose the baby.
After arriving at my doctor’s clinic, he performed an ultrasound and found that the baby was still alive and doing well, and also that I had placenta previa. I was immediately put on bed rest for several days, after which I was restricted to extremely limited activity — I could only go up and down the stairs in my house one time a day, no bending over, no lifting more than eight pounds (which meant I couldn’t hold my one-year-old child), no twisting, no squatting, etc. It was like this for eight weeks, and I kept bleeding for six weeks.
Finally, at the 20-week ultrasound, we found out that the placenta had moved and I was no longer considered high-risk.
The baby was due on February 9, 2022, but my husband’s work was doubling the amount of paternity leave they were giving to their employees beginning on February 14. I had never been pregnant past my due date, but we thought we might try making it five days past the due date to see if we could get the extra paternity leave. In fact, for all of my four other children, I was induced a week early and fully medicated.
Everything was perfectly planned, from who would watch the other kids while we were gone, to which friends or relatives we wanted present during the birth, down to which day of the week would work best for us to have a baby.
However, on the evening of February 12 at about 7:45 p.m., I started feeling uncomfortable. I had decided to spend the day in bed to see if I could make it 48 more hours, but at about 8 p.m., I started timing my contractions. I noticed they were getting closer and closer and the pain was intensifying. My husband was putting the kids down to sleep, and by 8:30 p.m., he had put the last child to bed, and we decided we were going to the hospital. We called a neighbor, my husband got in the car, and I told him I was going to use the bathroom and then I’d get in the car.
Photo: Elizabeth Todd
However, once on the toilet, I had the uncontrollable urge to push, so I did. My husband came back inside to check on me and once he saw me, decided to call 911. The dispatcher asked, “Is she bleeding?” I reached down to check, but that’s when I felt my baby’s head! I had NO IDEA I was this close to giving birth. The dispatcher then instructed my husband to get me off the toilet and onto the floor, and then there was a knock at the door.
Our neighbor, Natalie, a quiet reserved mother of two, had come over, and when my husband answered the door, he said, “Hi! Do you want to come help me deliver a baby?” They both hurried back upstairs to where I was, and Jon grabbed towels while Natalie held my head. Another push came and the baby’s head was out.
“Do I remove the sac?” Jon asked the dispatcher.
“The what?”
“The sac. The baby’s head is still in the sac.” My water had not broken yet and the baby was being born in the amniotic sac.
“If you want to,” replied the dispatcher.
“I’m not touching a thing!” Jon replied, for fear of causing another medical emergency.
Just then, EMTs arrived and opened the door announcing their presence. Jon called to them to come up the stairs, which they did — and right when my last push came, the water broke. Chris Montgomery of the Kaysville Fire Department caught the baby at 8:39 p.m. We then ended the call with the dispatcher, which turned out to be about six minutes long.
“Cute little fella you got here!” said Chris.
“It’s a boy!?!” Jon and I both surprisingly asked. But Chris was not declaring the gender, just merely commenting on the healthy baby. The baby was indeed a girl, like we had been expecting — eight pounds even and 20 inches long.
Photo: Elizabeth Todd
We were then calmly transported by ambulance to the hospital where the placenta was delivered and the baby and I were examined. After a 24-hour stay, we made it home in time to see the kids off to school for Valentine’s Day. And, Jon’s work decided to give him that extra paternity leave time.
But the biggest miracle of this whole event was that the other four children, ages seven and under, slept through it all, even though their bedrooms are just 10 feet away from our bedroom door!
The name we had picked before our daughter’s birth was perfect: Abigail Noel Todd. Noel means “the birth.” We had no idea at the time we picked this name that she would have an unusual birth. We are so grateful that everything turned out well in the end and we are now blessed with five beautiful, happy children.
