There are a lot of things nobody tells you about giving birth, and one of those things is that it could happen in your car, on the side of the highway, on your way to the hospital.
This was the case for Whitby, Ont. couple Erika and Troy Campbell when, just a few weeks ago, they welcomed their new daughter, Nova, on the shoulder of Ontario’s 407 toll highway.
According to the couple’s Youtube vlog, the events leading up to the pregnancy were as expected: Erika’s water broke and she began feeling light contraction pains shortly afterwards. “It’s just a little one,” Erika reassures her husband in one of the vlog videos, referring to a contraction.
Troy didn’t seem so convinced. “We should go [to the hospital],” he repeatedly says to his wife throughout the six-and-a-half-minute video. Erika agrees and opts for a quick shower before they leave. Troy takes the camera (and the viewers) with him downstairs where, in the middle of his hallway, he has a moment of almost too-good-to-be-true foreshadowing: “This baby gonna be born in the truck, watch.”
Troy told Global News that only about 30 minutes elapsed from his wife’s first signs of labour to the couple getting in the truck. And it was when Erika’s contractions intensified just a few minutes into the trip that she (and soon Troy) realized they weren’t going to make the 20-minute drive to the hospital.
“I was trying to hold in from not push...