Spouses Susanne Nevanranta Karlsson and Mattias Karlsson began Friday last week with morning training in the forest with the dogs. Six hours later, together with the police, they were helped to deliver Susanne’s eighth child at the side of the E22.
– I felt that water was starting to seep, but I thought it couldn’t be right. It was a little too early, says Susanne.
The baby was due on April 1st. But the maternity ward thinks that Susanne should take the safe bet and come into the hospital. She packs her bag before she and Mattias go inside.
– I hardly knew what to bring with me, I thought I would be allowed to go home again.
But that did not happen.
“Screamed several times”
Since Susanne is the only one of them with a driver’s license, she gets behind the wheel and begins their journey on the E22 towards the hospital. But by then, Susanne has started to have excruciating pains and in the end she can’t drive anymore.
She asks her husband to call for an ambulance, but then he sees the police. Susanne drives off the highway into the police checkpoint. The time is then 15.40.
– After a while, the police arrive. So I rolled down the window and thought “as long as he doesn’t ask me to blow, I can’t do that now,” she says.
After the police call the ambulance, Mattias gets to take over the phone.
– I felt that it won’t work. And my husband shouted several times: “Have you taken off your pants? You have to take off your pants!”. I didn’t have that but then I felt he was coming. I felt the head and everything.
She asks the police to squat down to receive. Ten minutes after they drive off the road, their son is born.
– The ambulance is just in time to get to my legs and receive the baby, says Susanne.
No pain relief
She says that both she and her son – who goes by the name “E22” – are doing well.
– They took him into an emergency room so that he could get his temperature up and he got a little extra help to breathe. But then everything was fine and he was able to come back to me.
Out of your eight births, how would you rate this one?
– It was probably the fastest birth and the one I felt the most. There was no pain relief or anything, it was just to end it. It was my own pain threshold that stepped in and said nothing was needed.
Now she and the “E22” expect to get home on Tuesday. And despite the clarity of the name, the son will get a new one.
– The father has a few names that he tries to figure out. It will be up to him now, says Susanne Nevanranta Karlsson.