A Connecticut couple delivered their newborn baby in a very unusual place on Sunday morning: a DUI checkpoint on Route 177 in Plainville.
Trevor and Bethel Hairston were home on Saturday night when Bethel knew it was time to go to the hospital.
The couple got in their car and headed for the hospital in New Britain, but they encountered the checkpoint.
“We went through that checkpoint. I kind of did a California roll,” Trevor Hairston said. “I didn’t really stop, but I just rolled the window down and said. ‘My wife’s in labor, we’re going!’”
But they didn’t make it too far.
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Bethel thought she was about to deliver the baby.
“When I first heard that she was in labor, I thought to myself, ‘We’d have plenty of time to get to the hospital,” Det. CJ Roper said.
Police called for an ambulance, but it would not arrive for at least 10 minutes, so police got into the car and realized that there was no time to wait.
Roper and several other officers delivered the Hairston’s baby in the front seat of their car.
“They came over and said the baby’s crowning. The baby’s here,” said Bethel Hairston.
At 1 a.m., 10 minutes after they entered the checkpoint, Christian Hairston was born, weighing 5 pounds, 7 ounces.
Both mom and baby were taken to The Hospital of Central Connecticut New Britain Campus, where they are doing just fine.
The Hairstons will have quite a story to tell to their new son.
“I said to Trevor, ‘What happens when they ask what hospital you were born in. What’s he going to say, my mom’s car?’” Bethel said.