Freeland woman gives birth outside EMS building in Bayview

Carol Maynard of Freeland considers herself a family planner. “I’d never want to have a baby in front of my father-in-law and some men in a parking lot,” she said Thursday afternoon.

Carol Maynard of Freeland considers herself a family planner.

“I’d never want to have a baby in front of my father-in-law and some men in a parking lot,” she said Thursday afternoon.

But about seven hours earlier, that’s what she did — and in the middle of a snowstorm, too.

“It’s such a crazy story, I can’t even believe it myself,” Maynard said from her room at Whidbey General Hospital’s birthing center.

“She’s a real trouper,” said her husband, James.

Maynard thought she had plenty of time. It was still more than two weeks until her due date, and everything was going along fine.

She and her husband decided it would be no problem for him to make a mandatory three-day business trip to Sacramento, Calif. He would be back in plenty of time for the birth of their second child.

But with snow in the forecast, they decided that she and their 3-year-old son, Duncan, should stay with her parents, Gary and MaryLynn Poland, near Possession Shores, at the southernmost point of the island.

“We were about as far away from Whidbey General as you can get on the island,” Maynard said. “I thought, if anything was going to happen, it would happen now.”

She was right.

About 2:20 a.m. Thursday, she felt some familiar twinges, and then some unmistakable contractions, which at the beginning, she said, were about 20 minutes apart. Then they sped up. Fast.

The family decided to summon James’s parents, Cyndy and Stephen Maynard of Greenbank, for added support, because her parents had an important medical appointment later in the day.

It took them an hour to get to Clinton on snow-covered roads. Meanwhile, Carol’s contractions came ever more quickly.

“They were getting out of control,” she said.

Her water broke just as her in-laws walked in the door.

“It was very Hollywood,” Maynard said. “I said, ‘Oh boy, it’s go time.’”

She said she left the house so quickly, she grabbed her father’s old pair of sneakers, which were several sizes too large.

With her father-in-law behind the wheel, Maynard climbed into the family’s new Toyota minivan and set off for Whidbey General in Coupeville.

But before they had gone far, the baby decided it was time to see the world. Maynard and her father-in-law called 911. The dispatcher urged them to stop and wait for technicians from the hospital’s Emergency Medical Services facility in Bayview.

“They said pull over, but I knew we didn’t have enough time,” Maynard said. “I told my father-in-law, ‘We’re not stopping.’”

As snow continued to fall, they turned the corner at the intersection of Highway 525 and Bayview Road, and entered the nearby EMS parking lot.

“They were just coming out of the building,” Maynard said of technicians Sig Kohl and Tom Cross. “And I could feel the baby’s head.”

Maynard said she opened the door, pushed the front passenger seat of the minivan as far back as it would go, and prepared to guide her new baby into the world.

“What I remember seeing were two guys, their eyes as big as light bulbs, and that it was snowing,” she said.

Within fewer than five minutes, a 7-pound, 6-ounce healthy baby boy was born at 6:05 a.m. He was 20 inches long.

“They all stood there with their mouths open,” Maynard said. “Then the baby cried, and there he was.”

Her father-in-law cut the umbilical cord. The emergency medical crew was prepared to do it, but Maynard insisted her father-in-law have the honor.

Then mother and snow baby were wrapped in blankets and transported by ambulance to Whidbey General.

“I’m embarrassingly fine,” Maynard said early Thursday afternoon. “I guess I’m still in shock.”

James Maynard caught the earliest flight he could get from Sacramento, and was at his wife’s bedside before noon on Thursday to get a look at his new son.

“What a great story,” he said. “Who would’ve thought.”

The Maynards came to South Whidbey from California in 2006 and married in 2008. He was a mortgage broker at US Bank in Freeland before recently joining a new business.

He said the new minivan, which the couple acquired two weeks ago by trading in their red, two-door Ford Mustang in favor of family transportation, is little the worse for wear.

“I’d give a big thumbs-up in a minivan commercial,” she said.

As for the newest family member, the couple, after going over their list of names, decided Friday on Myles Dean Maynard.

Then the family checked out of the hospital about noon and headed for home in Freeland.

“I thought a great name might be Parker,” the happy father said Friday.

“But he was miles away from the hospital, so it still works,” he added.