Carolyn Murdoch thought she was still a couple of weeks away from delivering her second baby when she agreed to a girls’ weekend away in Barrie, Ont.
But after her water broke early Sunday morning, the Brampton woman had to cut short her stay at Horseshoe Resort.
“I thought, OK this isn’t going away,” Murdoch told CTV Toronto.
Friends phoned Murdoch’s midwife at about 2:30 a.m. and she instructed them to make the hour-and-a-half drive to Brampton Civic Hospital.
But by the time the group had reached Vaughan, Ont., Murdoch realized she couldn’t make it to the hospital in time.
“I probably had four contractions and all of a sudden I said to my girlfriend who was driving the car, ‘Call an ambulance!’” she said. “I ripped my seatbelt off, she pulled over, I pulled my shorts down and baby came out.”
Murdoch gave birth to a seven-pound baby boy on the side of Hwy. 400, at the Hwy. 407 interchange, next to her two-year-old daughter who was strapped in her car seat at the time.
“She looked over and said, ‘Oh, baby,” said Murdoch from Humber River Regional Hospital where she is recovering with her yet-to-be-named newborn son.
Her friend and driver Kam Agarwal said the mother was “unbelievably calm” through the entire ordeal.
Police were alerted to the Murdoch’s roadside delivery at about 4:35 a.m., according to Ontario Provincial Police.
The newborn’s father, a Brampton firefighter, police and paramedics arrived on scene shortly after.
“I think I’m still in shock,” said Murdoch from her hospital bed, cradling her new baby boy. “I delivered my baby in the back seat of my car.”
With a report from CTV Toronto’s Scott Lightfoot
