By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer
Little Brennan Adamski is doing fine after coming into the world on the seat of his parent’s pickup truck in a hospital parking lot at the height of Monday’s winter storm.
But so much more happened that, when Brennan is old enough to understand, he may still not believe it: From dad driving into the wrong parking lot, to a bloody grandmother scaring hospital staff, to the umbilical cord around his neck.
The night started out very calm for Cabot couple Lauren and David Adamski, knowing the weather was getting bad, but also thinking they had two weeks left before delivery. Lauren headed to bed, and David was taking care of some work.
Lauren said she got up to use the restroom and, as she stood up from the bed, her water broke. “I knew it was time to go,” Lauren said. But she wasn’t feeling any pain, so she took a shower and David got things ready.
“All of a sudden, I got hit with excruciating pain. It was time to go,” she said.
Even with the pain, the couple went 10 minutes out of their way to pick up grandmother, thinking time was on their side.
Lauren’s doula, whom she hired because she wanted to have her baby naturally in the hospital, followed behind.
“She talked to me on the way to keep me calm, but the pain was getting worse. My mom said to get on my knees and maybe that would help. All the time, David is tying to keep the vehicle on the road and not slip on any patches of ice.”
By the time the couple got to Sherwood early Monday morning, Brennan’s head had popped out. Lauren said David kept telling her it would be just a few more minutes. “I don’t have a few more minutes,” Lauren told him.
David pulled into the Springhill Baptist Hospital parking lot. He discovered it was the wrong lot, but he also had no time left.
David ran to the passenger door and cradled his son’s head.
“But the shoulders wouldn’t come out, so David reached in and gently got him out. The cord was around his neck, but David unwrapped it and placed Brennan on my chest,” Lauren recalled.
While David was busy birthing a baby, grandmother, who Lauren said was freaking out as much as she was, ran into the hospital to get help. “She was covered in my blood, and the hospital staff thought someone had been murdered in the parking lot. They kept asking who got shot?” Lauren quipped.
And where was the doula?
When the head came out near Sherwood, David stepped on the gas and — by the time the doula got to the parking lot — the baby was born naturally, but not quite in the hospital.
Once Brennan was on Lauren’s chest, David told her to clean out his mouth and rub him. He then drove up to the right door, where the hospital staff met them.
They put Lauren in a wheelchair and into a room and whisked the baby away, worried about exposure.
“They kept him under heat, and we got to hold him for just a little while, but then the doctors were worried about his oxygen level and took him back again.”
But, by late Monday, Lauren and Brennan were reunited. “We are all stable, and he is just perfect at 6 pounds and 11 ounces. He cuddled and slept through the night. And it was good to feed him,” mom said.
Lauren praised her husband’s calmness. “I was freaking out,” she said.
But David said he had no other choice that he was just taking care of his family, which — besides Brennan — includes a 2-year-old daughter.
