Photo provided Rachelle Grey holds newborn Raven Lily as Dante Grey holds big sister Luna, as the family recovers from the newborn’s surprise arrival on the way to Columbus Regional Hospital.
When Raven Lily Grey decided to enter this world, nothing was going to stop her.
Weighing in at 6 pounds, 12 ounces, the daughter of Dante and Rachelle Grey was born early Thursday morning on the shoulder of State Road 46, about a mile west of Hartsville. Although Dante, 31, has been congratulated a number of times for taking over and delivering his daughter, the couple insists their newborn daughter did most of the work.
“She was coming at that time whether we liked it or not,” Rachelle said with a laugh.
The Greys, who reside northwest of the Honda plant near Greensburg, were scheduled to drive to Columbus Regional Hospital at 7:30 a.m. Thursday to have Rachelle induced into labor.
But apparently, Raven Lily had her own schedule.
It was just after 3 a.m. Thursday when Rachelle, 30, unexpectedly went into regular labor, she said. While Decatur County Memorial Hospital was a shorter distance away, the mother had grown up in Columbus and was known locally as Rachelle Barringer. She wanted her baby to be born in her hometown, she said.
“We knew it would take less than 30 minutes to get there,” Rachelle said. “I thought I would have plenty of time to get to the Columbus hospital.”
Their car headed south to State Road 46, where it turned right and headed west into Bartholomew County. But after entering Hartsville, Rachelle’s water broke as they drove by the Marathon gas station on Hartsville’s Washington Street, she said.
The father still believed he could get his wife to CRH in less than 15 minutes and continued driving a few more miles.
“But from everything I could see or hear, I thought this is probably it,” Dante said.
So he pulled the car over to the shoulder, got outside, ran quickly to the back of the vehicle, grabbed a towel and blanket from the trunk, rushed them to the front passenger side of the car and laid them out for his wife.
Dante then called 911 to request an emergency medical technician and ambulance. In Columbus, the Emergency Operations Center noted the call came in at 3:37 a.m.
The pain of the contractions were a new experience for Rachelle, who had received an epidural 20-months earlier when Raven’s big sister, Luna, was born.
“But this one was the complete opposite,” Rachelle said. “No medication whatsoever. No doctors. No nothing.”
And did Dante have any medical training that might qualify him to deliver the baby?
“Absolutely not,” his wife said.
The first thing the 911 dispatcher did was verify the couple’s location and give an estimate on when the ambulance would arrive, Dante said.
But just as he was being told how to instruct his wife to breath, the newborn’s head began to emerge.
“My heart was racing,” Dante recalls. “This was a rush baby. I wanted to make sure the umbilical cord wasn’t wrapped around the head. I was so worried there might be other complications.”
However, the father didn’t spend much time dwelling on his worries.
“I thought it would be longer before she would be able to push the baby out,” Dante said. “But no. The baby came right out and I caught it.”
The only thing that still concerned the father was the mucus that remained inside Raven’s mouth and nose. But after recalling what he saw during Luna’s birth, Dante went again to the back of his car, took out a bulb syringe from the trunk and successfully used it to clear out the substance.
“The baby began to breathe on her own, and we were fine after that,” he said. He then called 911 to update them on the situation.
At the Emergency Operations Center, a number of dispatchers was keeping their fingers crossed for the well-being of both mother and child. A note was later found posted to let everybody the baby was born without complications, center director Todd Noblitt said.
According to Noblitt, the time on the note was 3:47 a.m. It confirms that it took less than 10 minutes from when the car pulled off onto the shoulder to when Raven Lily arrived and she and her mother were reported as doing fine.
Speaking from her hospital bed Friday, Rachelle said the moment she held her newborn daughter for the first time, the memory of her pain from Thursday immediately faded away, she said.
Moments after the birth, a sheriff’s deputy checked in, concluding that everything that could be done had been done, Rachelle said. But the deputy stayed another 10 minutes until the ambulance arrived to take mother and daughter to Columbus Regional Hospital.
The conclusion of the Grey family’s experience includes one odd coincidence. Dante said the wife of a close male relative had delivered her second child about a week before Raven Lily was born.
“It may be hard to believe, but that child was also delivered on the side of the road,” Dante said. “I told my brother we ought to keep this family tradition going.”
