When Katelynn McHaffie woke up Monday, she felt slightly uncomfortable but didn’t imagine she’d soon be giving birth in a van travelling along a highway ramp with her 2-1/2-year-old son cheering her on.
“My midwife told me to expect a fast labour but nothing like this,” the 19-year-old mother said Wednesday.
McHaffie was awake at 2 a.m. Monday, helping her son Jack get back to sleep. She was not due to give birth for three days.
At 3 a.m., she started feeling rolling contractions and realized that the baby was on the way.
She woke up her boyfriend, Justin Ramsay, and had him call her grandmother, Val Utman, saying they needed a ride to Victoria General Hospital.
Utman picked up mom, dad and toddler about 4 a.m. from their Esquimalt Road home, loading them into the back of her 1995 Dodge Caravan.
She then frantically hit the gas to get to the hospital.
“I was totally running red lights and I don’t care,” Utman said.
But when they got to the highway exit, McHaffie knew they wouldn’t make it to the hospital.
“I was like ‘Nope. I can feel her. She’s coming right here, right now,’ ” she said.
As her grandmother kept driving, McHaffie felt her water break and, with her son on one side and her boyfriend on the other, she pushed until she heard the first wails of her daughter, Jocelyn.
Throughout the entire ordeal, Jack comforted his mom.
“He was rubbing my shoulder and saying, ‘It’s OK Mommy, I love you. Are you OK? I love you,’ ” McHaffie said.
Meanwhile, her boyfriend was on the phone with the midwife, who was telling McHaffie to wait until they reached the hospital.
But by the time the group made it to VGH, baby Jocelyn, who weighed nine pounds and three ounces, was already wrapped in blankets.
When Utman stopped the van in front of the emergency room and ran inside to grab a nurse, no one believed her story about the birth. They told her if her granddaughter was giving birth, they should go to the other entrance.
It wasn’t until Utman got them outside and showed off the baby that the nurses realized what had happened.
Jack helped explain the situation, announcing: “It’s a baby!”
Utman and McHaffie both agree they’ll have a great story to tell Jocelyn as she grows up. The proud great-grandmother already has a special gift planned.
“I will put that van in storage, when I’m done with it, and it will be Jocelyn’s first vehicle when she turns 16,” Utman said.
