By Christine Dempsey
The Hartford Courant
HARTFORD, Conn. — Imani Crawford woke up in the middle of the night, her body wracked with painful contractions. They were coming every 3-4 minutes, even though her baby wasn’t due until Feb. 25. It was time to go to the hospital.
Little did she know, she wouldn’t make it. Her baby girl had other plans. Gelaih Murphy was born on the side of the highway in Hartford about 1:15 a.m. Thursday.
“It was scary,” Crawford, 26, told a hospital room full of reporters and photographers Thursday as she cradled the newborn in her arms.
“She’s strong, you know,” she said as she started to cry. “It was so cold. But she’s a trouper.”
The 6 pound, 8 ounce baby is in good health, Crawford said. She didn’t make a sound during the interview.
“Nothing really bothers her,” she said.
Crawford said she never expected the birth of her second child to go this way. When her first child — also a girl — was born in December 2015, she had time for an epidural to ease the pain, she said.
Not the case this time.
“It happened so fast,” she said. “It was all within the hour.”
The contractions were almost unbearable, Crawford said. She got into the back seat of Shaniqua Francis’ Honda Civic so she could lie down, and she and Francis, Gelaih’s father’s cousin, left Crawford’s Wethersfield home for St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center.
On the way, Crawford felt an overwhelming urge to use a bathroom and asked Francis to pull over. Francis ended up stopping at the top of the ramp for Exit 87 on Route 5/15. Crawford got out of the passenger side of the car and tried to urinate.
"…As soon as I squatted down, I felt so much pressure, like I had to push,” she said. “So once I started pushing, I felt her whole head.” She put one hand under the baby’s head and used her other hand to support Gelaih’s body.
“And within three pushes, she was already here,” she said. “I said, ‘Call 911, she came out.’ ”
Enter Trooper Chuck Lavoie, who was working on the desk at the Troop H barracks in Hartford.
He asked if the baby was crying and when the answer was no, he asked if she was breathing. Francis didn’t know, and Lavoie — who just became a father for the second time three weeks ago — told the women to lean into the baby and listen for breaths. Gelaih was breathing fine.
He told Francis to make sure the baby bundled up in a jacket, according to the 911 tape provided by the state police.
Then he got some surprising news. The mother and baby were not in the car.
“You’re outside of the car?” he asked. He instructed Crawford, through Francis, to carefully go back into the car with the baby.
As he talked to Francis — who wasn’t sure exactly which highway she was on — troopers were getting on highways in the area to look for the Honda. They also pinged her cellphone, using cell towers to try to find her location.
Back in the car, Crawford was trying to keep the baby warm without jarring Gelaih or the umbilical cord, which still was intact.
“I kind of was leaned [back] a little bit but I didn’t want to fully lay down because, I was kind of nervous. I didn’t know how far the umbilical cord would stretch,” she said.
When police arrived, one of the troopers got into the back seat with Crawford so she could lean against him for support, she said.
An ambulance took her to the hospital, and Gelaih’s temperature, which initially was a little too cool, warmed up, she said.
Crawford quickly became the talk of the hospital, she said, with staff coming into her room and chatting about her unusual delivery.
“No one can believe it,” she said. “People are calling me and are like ‘Hey, did you have your baby on the side of the highway?’ ”
In the end, it doesn’t matter how she gave birth, she said.
“But hey, she’s healthy. That’s all that matters to me.”
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©2017 The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.)