‘Nothing went wrong:’ No hitches in surprise births during snowstorm

Kelsie Funk has one wild birth story to tell her son when he’s old enough to understand it.

The cabinet designer was one of three moms in the Rosthern area to go into labour at home in the middle of a whiteout Monday night.

“It was absolutely unexpected,” Funk said about the birth of her son, Lincoln Oliver.

Funk and her husband had prepared very carefully for this birth. Their first son, now three and a half, was born four weeks early, so Funk said she and her husband had packed their bags for the hospital a month ago. Their due date wasn’t until March 23.

Funk worked her normal shift Monday. During the day, one of her coworkers asked if she had felt the baby drop yet. She said she didn’t know, but upon hearing it mentioned, felt it was possible.

“That was kind of the first sign that things were maybe moving along,” Funk recalled.

Still, she wasn’t feeling any cramping or contractions. So when she got home, she put her toddler to bed and fell asleep with him. She woke up around 11:30 p.m. with what she called “moderate contractions” and told her husband, Steve.

He suggested she time her contractions to determine whether it was worth going to the hospital yet. She did, and found they were perfectly one and a half minutes apart, as her pain increased over a 10-minute period.

Walking into the hallway, Funk told her husband that she thought they might have to leave for the hospital soon and that she was going to have a shower.

That caused her husband to leap to his feet — she thinks because she said the same thing when she was going into labour with their son, Jacob — and called his brother to come and watch their son while they went to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Rosthern was enduring a significant winter storm. Steve packed their bags into the car and got their vehicle warmed up.

Funk showered and remembered taking about 10 steps before realizing they were not going to make it to the hospital.

“We literally didn’t have time to do anything,” Funk said, remembering her water breaking and a feeling from her body that she was going to have to push right away.

Kelsie Funk and her husband, Steve, in the hospital with their family’s newest addition, Lincoln Oliver. (Kelsie Funk/Submitted)

As Steve called 911, their son woke up and started trailing behind Funk as she walked down the hallway.

“He was like, ‘Mommy, what’s going on?’ because I’d have to stop every few seconds to contract,” Funk said.

She headed to the bedroom, calmly saying the baby was coming, and positioned herself on her bed.

“It was scary but our three-year-old was there so you kind of just do what you have to do,” Funk said, adding she was nervous and didn’t feel ready to have the baby at home. “It was three pushes total and the baby was on the bed.”

Her husband was on the phone with a 911 operator, who was helping to keep them both calm and talked them through the process. Steve caught their son as he was delivered.

“I didn’t think delivery of a baby could be that fast. He just popped out! It was amazing,” Funk said. “Even having had delivered one before, three and a half years ago, I don’t remember anything. I felt as green as possible, but your body just tells you.”

Funk said the most difficult part was making sure they properly tied off the umbilical cord.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without (my husband); he really kept it together,” Funk said, adding “and the 911 operator!”

Just as exceptional was that paramedics reached the Funks’ home in less than half an hour.

“They made it onto our driveway; like, we have a half-a-mile-long driveway  in the middle of grid roads and farmland,” Funk explained. “It’s very hard to see where you’re going in a whiteout, and they made it here.

“We are so grateful, I don’t know what we would have done.”

As they geared up for what ended up being a smooth ride to the hospital, despite the terrible weather, Funk said one of the paramedics said to her that two other home births had happened in town that night. Three ambulances had been dispatched to the various births all at the same time.

Funk said she and her husband remarked how crazy that was, but the bizarreness of the night only really sank in the following morning.

In spite of everything, Funk said the whole experience went as smoothly as it possibly could have, using words like “thankful,” “blessed” and “fortunate.”

“We didn’t do anything exceptional. We were just lucky that nothing went wrong,” Funk said.