MURRAY — Thursday was no typical Thanksgiving for Daxton and Vannessa Lowe, after she gave birth to a baby girl on the side of the I-15 freeway in Murray.
The Utah couple were en route to the hospital Thursday evening after the expecting mother began to feel labor pains coming on.
They planned to drop their nearly 2-year-old daughter off with family and thought they would have enough time to comfortably make it to the hospital.
But as Daxton Lowe had taken their toddler inside their family member’s home and was grabbing some Thanksgiving dinner for his wife to eat on the way to the hospital, she started feeling intense birth contractions.
“I called him and I said, ‘Get the food, come back to the car — I’m dying right now,” Vannessa Lowe said Friday, as she and her husband spoke with reporters.
Daxton Lowe said he tried to get to Intermountain Medical Center in Murray as fast as he could, but it soon became apparent that they weren’t likely to make it there in time.
“And that’s when I go, ‘Are you going to make it?’” he recalled.
To which Vannessa Lowe replied: “I feel like she’s coming right now, and I reached down and I go, ‘Wow, that’s her head,’” she told reporters.
Daxton Lowe called emergency dispatchers as he pulled off to the side of the freeway near the 5300 South exit, where the baby was delivered right on the front seat of their minivan.
“She just shot out, and I somehow caught her,” Vannessa Lowe said.
Luna Grace Lowe was born weighing 5 pounds, 6 ounces, just before 5:30 p.m. Thursday. The mother and the healthy baby were transported to the hospital, which was just a few minutes away.
While having their baby born on the freeway wasn’t what they expected or hoped, Vannessa Lowe said she wanted to have something to remember the birthing experience.
“So I started recording, and you mostly can only hear sound, but he handled it so well,” she said of her husband.
The Lowes grew up in the Millcreek area and were high school sweethearts. Their first child was born a little more than two weeks early, and they anticipated their newborn might also arrive ahead of the due date, which was supposed to be Monday, Dec. 1.
Obviously, ensuring the birth of their second child had to take precedence over enjoying Thanksgiving dinner, but Vannessa Lowe said she eventually was able to enjoy some form of a holiday meal.
“(I) had some green jello salad, and then I had one of the prepped hospital sandwiches; and let me tell you, it was so good,” she said.
“It was turkey for Thanksgiving,” Daxton Lowe added.
The experience is one the couple will likely remember for years to come, and they can share the story with Luna Grace one day when she is older.
“It was just so funny afterward to go back and listen to the video and be like, ‘Oh wow we did that. We had a baby while you were driving, and I caught her,’ like it’s insane,” Vannessa Lowe said.
While swaddling the newborn, the proud parents said their baby is “doing great.”