A stunned dad has told how his partner gave birth in the footwell of his car as he was doing 70mph in a motorway fast lane. Lee Reynolds, 34, thought he had “plenty of time” when Natalie Whitton, 31, went into labour in the early hours of Wednesday morning (July 27) with their second child.
But as the pair were blasting along the M65, near Burnley, Lancashire, he watched in shock as his new baby, Harrison, “shot out” into the footwell of his Ford Fiesta estate. Lee, who was on the phone to a midwife for most of the journey, said he remembered thinking, “Oh, sh*t! We ain’t going to make it", just moments earlier.
And following the sudden arrival of his 7lb, 11oz baby, he peeled off onto the hard shoulder to wait for an ambulance crew. But as the minutes ticked by with no sign of a medic, the concerned dad decided to make a dash for the nearest hospital, where Natalie got immediate assistance.
Transport manager Lee said: "We were in the fast lane going 70mph, and I just looked on the floor and went 'there’s a baby in the footwell!' to my partner.
“She quickly picked up the baby and then the midwife on the phone was telling us what to do. We needed to make sure the baby was breathing, and once she was sure the baby was breathing, she said to carry on.”
Natalie added: “Lee kept asking me if I wanted to pull over. I could feel a little bit of an urge to push, but I said: ‘keep going!’ Then all of a sudden, the baby came out, and it went into the footwell of the car on the floor.
“I remember feeling relieved that this pressure had gone. I had a water birth before, and that helped a lot, but I had nothing this time.”
Lee, who lives with kitchen worker Natalie in Darwen, Lancashire, said his partner had begun experiencing contractions around 3.30am on Wednesday. But the pair didn’t rush to Burnley Hospital, as they’d been previously been turned away before the birth of their first daughter, Sienna, now aged four, for arriving too early.
He said: “Natalie rang Burnley Hospital at about 3.30 in the morning to speak to the midwife, but when she stood up, her water had gone. She had these pains but said ‘I’ll hold off for a bit’, just thinking there’s no point going all the way to Burnley just to get turned away again.”
Lee said they’d spent the next few hours organising childcare for their daughter, before setting off in their car for the 30-minute journey around 5.30am. But as they sped along the motorway, he began frantically calling nearby birthing units and the emergency services, worried they had left things too late.
He said: “When we were on the motorway, Natalie said 'it’s coming, I’m not going to make it', and that's when I thought, 'oh, sh*t! We aren’t going to make it'. I ended up dialling Blackburn Birth Centre, which is closer to Burnley than us.
“But when we called the midwife and said, ‘can we come to you’, she said, ‘no, we’re full’, so we just carried on."
Lee later got a call back from the midwife to check on their progress when, all of a sudden, his partner gave birth to their tiny baby boy.
He said: “I was talking to the midwife on the phone, and then the baby shot out, literally shot out, into the footwell. I just turned round and said: 'There’s a baby in the footwell! There’s a baby in the footwell!' I was in a proper panic.
“So the midwife said to me, ‘pull over on the hard shoulder and ring 999.’ So that’s when I pulled over.”
Lee helped Natalie perform some basic health checks on their new child - who was born at 5.57am - under the guidance of 999 emergency call handlers. But after waiting some time for an ambulance, Lee decided to take matters into his own hands and drive onto Burnley Hospital with Natalie and their newborn child.
He said: “I could actually see the sign on junction 12 of the M65 for Burnley hospital – and that’s the junction I needed. I was ten minutes away.
“So I ended speaking to the midwife, saying 'am I better just going? What do you advise?' and she said, 'if you think you’ll be alright, and you’ll be quicker, just go for it'.
“We went straight into the hospital, into the emergency out-of-hours unit and two midwives and a healthcare assistant came running out to Natalie to help her.”
Lee said Natalie spent roughly six hours with doctors before the pair finally returned home with their healthy new baby boy the same day.
