Britt Williams had planned to deliver her third child in Radford.
However, when the labor pains came Tuesday, the Patrick County lawyer knew the hour-plus ride probably wasn’t a good idea.
“I need to go to Stuart,” she told her husband, Del. Wren Williams, R-Patrick County.
She was admitted at 2:33 p.m., although not for long. The staff at Stuart Community Hospital said she needed to get to a delivery ward as soon as possible. At that point, the nearest was in Mount Airy, North Carolina — about half an hour away, although perhaps less in the ambulance.
The mom-of-two-soon-to-be-three was loaded into the ambulance; her state legislator husband followed behind. Or tried to. They soon got separated in traffic.
Just outside Flat Rock, North Carolina, Wren Williams crested a hill. He saw the ambulance pulled over to the side of the road and one of the paramedics walking around the vehicle. “I thought, Oh no, they had gotten into some sort of fender-bender.”
He pulled in behind and waited. “Finally, both doors of the back of the ambulance fly open and both paramedics wave me in,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Congratulations, you’re a dad, your little boy’s here.’ Mom was there, exhausted, crying. I’m in shock, she’s in shock, they’re in shock..”
Britt Williams had just given birth on the side of the road.
Once at the hospital, Crispin Wells Williams was declared a healthy baby and officially weighed in at 8 pounds, 1 ounce.
The official announcement from the family came with the tagline: “Mother and baby are doing well after a wild ride.”
