Born On The Move On I-84—

Charlotte Lowery Takes On

Her New Life In The Fast Lane

By Shannon Hicks

You know it is going to be an unusual day when one of the first e-mails you receive says, “I delivered my own baby, Charlotte Patricia, in the passenger seat of our car while driving on 84W at exit 9 while my husband was driving!”

That was the message sent to The Bee on Tuesday morning, from Sandy Hook resident Elizabeth Lowery. A few hours later, Mrs Lowery was very comfortably receiving guests in her room at Danbury Hospital, with husband Wilson, son Orion, and mother Charlotte happily buzzing around her. Orion wanted to hold his new baby sister, but was momentarily distracted with the offer of some of his favorite toy cars and trucks.

For someone who had given birth to her second child less than 12 hours earlier, Elizabeth Lowery was the picture of calm. She hadn’t slept yet, but said she wasn’t tired.

“I’m fine, really,” she said. “We all are.

“I’m feeling really good. A little surprised by what happened this morning,” she laughed. “But we’re great.”

Elizabeth Lowery felt the beginnings of contractions around midnight Monday, January 23. The contractions really started picking up at 1 am, she said Tuesday afternoon.

“I could feel, when we were still at the house, that she was coming,” she said, recalling the events of less than 12 hours earlier.

At 3 am, said Wilson, Elizabeth felt like the contractions were steady but it wasn’t yet time to do anything about them.

“Between 4:15 and 5:30 though, she went from being not quite there to entirely there,” said Wilson.

Elizabeth and Wilson called on their neighbors, Denise and Steve Soucar, to babysit Orion while they headed toward the hospital.

“They came right over to stay with him this morning. They were wonderful. We couldn’t have done this without them,” said Elizabeth. “She was holding me up through a few contractions. She helped me put on and tie my shoes.”

As soon as they were able to, the Lowerys headed for I-84 and Danbury Hospital. They were on their way to the hospital when, according to Wilson, they were about one mile past Exit 10 when his wife announced her water had broken.

Wilson was driving his Nissan Altima, which did not leave much legroom for his wife.

“We were pulling up toward Exit 9 and she slammed her hand on the ceiling and said, ‘The baby is coming. Right. Now,’” he said, laughing with his wife. “So I start to pull down the ramp and before we’re even halfway down the ramp, she’s pulling up the baby.”

Charlotte was born on Tuesday, January 24, at 5:30 am, “at about 55 miles per hour,” Elizabeth said. She weighed 6 pounds, 5 ounces, and was 19½ inches long at her birth.

“The fluids were all clear. She was pink, and she was breathing, so that made us feel better,” said Elizabeth. “The only thing was, I didn’t have anything to really wrap her in except the sweatpants I was previously wearing.”

Once the couple determined their daughter seemed fine it dawned on them that their journey wasn’t quite finished.

“I thought ‘Why are we stopped?!’” said Elizabeth.

“The only thing I was thinking was ‘We need to get to the hospital,’” her husband said.

The birth certificate gives the location of the child’s birth as Exit 9 I-84.

Dad is credited as the attending physician, while Dr Mom is the name on the Mother/Baby Positive Identification Card on Charlotte’s hospital bassinette.

“I was driving the whole time,” Wilson said.

“But he was a great driver,” Elizabeth said, seated in a chair opposite her husband, cuddling Charlotte in her lap. “He kept his cool the whole time. He didn’t flinch the whole time.

“I think we were both kind of in shock that we had just had a baby in the car, but he kept driving,” she continued. “Once we stopped he thought enough to call 911, and they connected us to the hospital. He arranged everything with them, so that they met us at the emergency entrance with a stretcher when we arrived.

“They were all waiting, all smiling, when we pulled up,” said Elizabeth. “I think everybody knew what had happened. They were just great.”

Wilson had been able to make time to go home to pick up Orion, and brought him to the hospital to meet his new baby sister.

The Lowerys were enjoying a bit celebrity on Tuesday. Doctors and nurses of the maternity ward had stopped in, said Elizabeth and Wilson, to see how they were all doing.

“They stop in to hear our story,” Elizabeth said.

Charlotte Patricia Lowery is named in honor of her maternal and paternal grandmothers, respectively. She is the granddaughter of Charlotte Pavlides, and Patricia L. and Woodrow Wilson Lowery, Jr.

Other than the little hiccup on the way to the hospital, Charlotte’s birth went just the way her mother had hoped it would.

“I wanted a natural, intervention-free birth. I got that,” Elizabeth said, again laughing. “My labor with Orion was pretty difficult, and long. Compared to that, this was much easier and I highly recommend it.

“And it’s a really good story for her.”

Charlotte Lowery may not have won The Newtown Bee’s 2012 First Baby Contest for her parents. But it will be hard to beat her for Most Dramatic Entrance.