MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WBTW) – On Wednesday night, during the peak of the winter storm, firefighters and emergency responders were called to a woman in labor on the side of an icy road in North Myrtle Beach.
Jennifer Reed Millan’s water broke at home so her mom immediately started driving and told Millan’s husband to meet them at the hospital.
“We thought we had a lot more time than we did,” says Millan.
They got a few miles down the road when she told her mom to pull over.
“I could just tell it was really, really close,” recalls Millan. “We were getting to that point where we weren’t going to make it much further without having my mom deliver the baby, so we had to call for some help.”
Crews from Horry County Fire Rescue responded with aid from North Myrtle Beach Fire Rescue to get Millan into the ambulance.
“Maybe about two minutes after we got in the ambulance, we had a baby boy,” she laughs. Icy conditions on Wednesday made for a slow ride to the hospital but Millan said the men and woman on the ambulance kept her comfortable.
“I was completely caught off guard that this was going to be happening so quickly,” laughs Millan. “So they calmly told me we were going to have this baby in the ambulance. As calmly as they could.”
Mateo Mauricio Millan was born at 7lbs and 6oz and 20in long, making Millan and her husband parents of three children.
“It was a scary situation,” Millan admits. “But it went very quickly. We made it here safely and everybody’s healthy and happy.”
Millan said her oldest son was born a day before an ice storm in 2013 and her daughter was born two days after Hurricane Matthew, so it’s fitting Mateo was born during this storm. She hopes to meet back up with the first responders to say ‘thank you.’
