Stories from Moms Who Delivered Blizzard Babies
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Paticia Strickland holds twins born in Massachusetts during Monday night’s blizzard. (Courtesy UMass Memorial Medical Center)(NEW YORK) — At 35 weeks pregnant, Paticia Strickland was joking with a friend about what would happen if she went into labor during the storm barreling toward the East Coast this week.
An hour later, she was on all fours as contractions came one after another for 20 minutes until an ambulance could arrive at her home in Worcester, Massachusetts.
“Contractions came out of nowhere,” she told ABC News. “There was no warning at all. They were so strong, I just got the sudden urge to push.”
Strickland’s 5-year-old daughter cried as Strickland left in an ambulance alone after getting a few hugs and well-wishes from her family. All the roads were closed to non-essential traffic because of the snow emergency, so Strickland’s husband couldn’t follow her to the hospital. Worcester was expecting 18 to 20 inches of snow by the time the storm is over.
“I was so scared,” said Strickland, 28, a homemaker with three other children.
As Strickland was sitting up in the back of an ambulance on the way to UMass Memorial Medical Center, her water broke, she said. Seconds later, her son Gabriel was born. But that wasn’t the end of it.
When they pulled up to the hospital, Strickland was rushed to the operating room, where she then delivered baby Aliyah.
“I was only in labor for maybe 40 minutes,” she said. “My first call was to my children’s father to let him know that his children made it into the world.”
When she told him Gabriel was born in the back of an ambulance, she said it sounded like he stopped breathing.
Strickland said she can’t wait to take her “little minions” home. They were born premature, but they’re expected to stay in the hospital only about 10 days, she said.
Meanwhile, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Danielle Smith went into labor at the height of the storm — just as the power went out.
She wasn’t up to talking to ABC News on Tuesday, but she gave birth to baby Cayden Moore at 3:35 a.m. at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, a hospital official said.
“Cayden was born at the height of the blizzard just after the island had lost power, forcing the hospital to rely on its generator for power,” said hospital spokesman Jason Graziadei.
ABC News’ Boston station WCVB-TV reported on several other New England blizzard babies who just couldn’t wait to make their arrival.
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