Harrowing trip
Expectant parents rushed to hospital during blizzard
James Hicks will have a story to tell his friends in a few years about how he entered the world.
The healthy eight- pound, fiveounce baby boy was born at the Cumberland Regional Health Care Centre early Wednesday morning. It was how he got there that was story.
His mother, 33- year- old Nicole Anderson of Point- de- Bute, N. B., started having contractions just after 6 p. m. on Monday, but several hours later they were getting closer and there was little relief. That’s when she realized her baby was coming.
“The first thing I thought was the baby is coming then it was Oh my God, how are we going to get to the hospital?” Anderson said early Friday. “I looked outside and you couldn’t see a thing it was snowing so hard. I was scared because this was my first baby and didn’t know what to expect. I knew the baby was coming but didn’t know if we’d make it to the hospital.”
She knew she had to get to the hospital, but didn’t know the blizzard had shut down the highway between Amherst and Moncton. Her husband, Jeffrey Hicks call 911 and an ambulance and snowplow arrived about 30 minutes later.
“I knew there was no way were getting the car out to drive to the hospital, the only way was the ambulance,” he said. “It was an experience.”
Even when the ambulance and plow arrived, there was too
much snow in the driveway for the ambulance to safely navigate so she volunteered to walk out to the road with the help of the paramedics.
While her doctor was in Moncton and that’s where she was supposed to give birth later this month, driving snow and strong winds made that impossible so it was decided to go to the hospital just outside Amherst.
As the plow guided to ambulance toward Amherst it was supposed to be met by a plow from Nova Scotia at the border. That plow, however, experienced difficulty and the New Brunswick plow operator agreed to continue toward the hospital.
Anderson was in the back of
the ambulance and couldn’t see how bad things were, but she could feel the ambulance shaking in the wind and snow and for a few moments thought she would be giving birth there instead of in the hospital.
The normal 10 to 15 minute drive to Amherst took close to an hour.
When the couple made it to the hospital, little James was in no hurry to come – waiting approximately 24 hours before being born at just after 1 a. m. on Wednesday.
Jeff Hull from New Brunswick’s Transportation and Infrastructure Department said everyone is happy with the ending.
“We are pleased to hear that both the baby and family are doing well,” Hull said.