The truth about being pregnant is that you can't plan when your baby will arrive. Sure, a due date may give us a good idea. But not too many babies decide that they're ready on the exact day that the doctor predicts.
Some babies come much earlier than expected. Just ask 35-year-old Emily Geller Hardman, who thought it'd be OK to attend an out-of-state wedding at 37 weeks pregnant. While Emily sat through the entire ceremony and reception, when she returned to her hotel room, it seemed like her labor might be kicking off already.
Then she realized that her water broke. That's a natural sign that it's go time.
But Emily chose to wait a little. "The amniotic fluid was clear and there were no contractions," she explained to Good Morning America. "And this was a first-time labor for me. Statistically, most first-time labors are about 16 to 24 hours, so in my head we had plenty of time."
Though Emily had another baby already, she never went into labor with that birth. So it seemed like a fair assumption that, like most first-time labors, things would take a while to progress.
While Emily knew a lot of the signs, she didn't play the "better safe than sorry" card that many women choose to do during labor. Since she was out of state, that may have caused her to feel more confused about how to proceed. Her contractions finally started at 3 a.m.
Emily, who works as an opera singer, admitted that she felt prepared to labor in the car if need be. It seems like in general she was very confident about what came next. It's worth noting, as many other moms-to-be in that situation might be in a state of total panic.
"In my head I was thinking that I've been preparing for this for three years," she said. "I can certainly do early labor in the car." Emily definitely spent a lot of time preparing for her second child's birth. Her first child was delivered via C-section, which seems to have been a traumatic experience. This time around, she had chosen a different hospital, where she planned to have an unmedicated vaginal birth.
"I was very involved in the physiological birth world," she said. She had initially planned to give birth surrounded by midwives and doulas. For part of the car ride, she thought things would be OK. She had no clue how quickly things were progressing with her labor.
"My husband's driving and the entire time I'm focusing on listening to the [GentleBirth meditation] app to get me through each contraction. I was just riding the waves and hoping we were going to make it back," she explained. "We still didn't realize how fast this was going."
She still had a ways to go. Her husband decided to take a driving break around 5:30 a.m., but that's around the time that Emily really figured out how far along she was. "Once I stood up, I think gravity hit and I started bearing down," she said. "My water starts leaking again. But I knew that we had to get back in the car and get to the hospital so I willed myself back into the backseat."
Suddenly, her contractions were happening faster than ever. "I either needed to, for lack of a better word, get on board with what was happening and just allow my body to do what it was doing or I could fight it tooth and nail, which didn't seem like it was going to be helpful," she said. In that moment, she realized it was time.
"I could feel myself bearing down and pushing," she said. "I instinctively just reached down because I'm feeling so much pressure and I feel the top of a baby's head starting to crown." On top of being in labor, her husband was looking for a good place to pull the car over and help. But the baby didn't even wait for that.
In fact, her baby almost made the process of giving birth seem easy. According to Emily, there was no trouble whatsoever when it came to getting her out. "It was just a one-shot deal," she said. "She just flew out."
Her daughter, whom she named Rosemary Claire, will have the best birth story out of all her friends. And Emily seems to have no regrets whatsoever about how things went down. "I thought something like, 'I did it.' It was empowering and a very healing experience," she said. "I do feel very lucky."
Emily is proof that with the right level of confidence, you can handle anything. While she might not have thought that her baby girl would be delivered in a car, she stepped into action when she had to. It's a story that nobody in the family will ever forget.
