Last Thursday, a week before her due date, Emily Johnson, 31, started having contractions every 10 minutes.
Michael Johnson, Emily’s husband, told CNN on Monday: “They’re pretty low and slow.
“It was early labor, we’ve been through it before,” he added, as this is the couple’s second child.
The Johnsons lived just five minutes from the hospital in Vacaville, southwest of Sacramento, so they thought they had plenty of time. But that quickly changed.
The couple called Emily’s mother, Kristy Sparks, to see their 3-year-old son, Blake, snatch their hospital bags, and dash out the door and down the driveway.
But that’s as far as they’ve gotten.
“At this point, I quickly called her (Kristy) and said, ‘Change plans – she can’t get in the car.’ Luckily, she was right down the street,” Michael said.
Emily knew she wouldn’t make it to the hospital in time, so she lay down on the front lawn and accepted that she would deliver the baby right there.
Emily told CNN: “I was going to accept those wonderful painkillers at the hospital. “Natural childbirth wasn’t part of my birth plan. But with how quickly labor was moving, we knew I wasn’t going to make it.”
Michael called 911 and paramedics were on their way to assist with the delivery.
“I’m running in to get a towel; I have my phone in hand,” he said. “and at this point, we think this is going to happen right here, right now.”
When Sparks arrived at the house, she knelt down to help her daughter, and the paramedics soon arrived in the temporary delivery room. That’s when the grandmother yelled at them that she had seen a head, the couple told CNN.
Baby Thomas was later born at 10:42 p.m. local time on the front lawn, weighing 7 pounds, 11 ounces.
Emily told KCRA: ‘I just lay down on the grass and took a deep breath. “I never want to do that again.”
All recorded on camera
Emily said: ‘Mike realized after running back and forth that the ring camera had a little blue light and it was recording all of this.
From Emily’s moans in labor to Thomas’s first cry, everything was recorded from behind Emily.
The couple said they reviewed the footage shortly after arriving at the hospital, and nursing staff also lined up to watch.
“We joked that next time we would go to the hospital parking lot to be better prepared for it,” says Emily.
Both mother and child are happy, healthy and recovering well, according to the couple.
