Lisa Brown, 31, with three-and-a-half weeks to go on her pregnancy due date, was in the enviable position of being past worry that anything could go awry. She’d already given birth to 5-year-old Maybeline, and 2-year-old Eleanor, both blond and beautiful like their mother, and the delivery of each had gone according to plan, on a hospital birthing table, midwife at the ready, with a nice epidural to smooth things over.
So no worries infiltrated the Browns’ attractive contemporary home in the pastoral, water-view environs of Hidden Cove in Oak Bluffs. On the morning in question, a Sunday, Lisa awoke feeling not too hunky-dory; a bit shaky, in fact. She sent husband Brent, 34, on to church services with Maybeline and Eleanor, and stayed home in hopes of overcoming her mystery ailment.
Around noon contractions set in, and her water broke. “Boom!” she described it, and she texted Brent to skedaddle back with the girls. She called her midwife, Nancy Leport. “Should I be eating something?” she asked, at the same time that she was knocked on her keister by seismic contractions. Ms. Leport told her to race to the hospital, as would she.
Brent had returned home, and now Lisa asked him to gather up the girls. They were barefoot as he gathered them up, hustling them to the car along with his groaning wife. Lisa piled into the backseat and assumed the only position that gave her any relief: on her hands and knees.
Brent described the situation recently to the MV Times: “We left the house at 2:48 in the afternoon and Harrison was born at 3 o’clock.” This involved a car race north along County Road calling to mind Steve McQueen in the hills of San Francisco.
A bit of background about these people with a third baby in a rush to be born: Lisa grew up in Riverside, Calif., then pushed off to Brigham Young University in Idaho to study communications. Brent was her math tutor, also at B.Y.U. majoring in construction management. Not only did he help her to understand the mysteries of algebra, he impressed her enough that she found herself flirting with him outrageously, and vice versa. Extra tutoring turned into dating, and they pursued a romantic course on and off for the next few years.
Lisa took a gap year from both B.Y.U. and their relationship when she journeyed east on a mission for her church to Washington, D.C. Upon her return, fate — and Cupid — took a stronger hand by providing Brent with a job building houses near her family’s home in Riverside. They were married in Huntington Beach. In May 2010, Brent was hired to be a contractor for Rosbeck Builders of Edgartown, where he’s worked ever since. The starry-eyed couple, following in the footsteps of so many Islandophiles before them, fell in love with the Vineyard, no quibbles, no glances back, and after renting a few domiciles, in 2014 bought their house on Stone Pond Way. And then the stork brought Maybeline, followed by Eleanor.
Flash-forward to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital and a daddy racing the family’s white Honda Pilot down County Road, and even passing other cars. (Where are the cops when you need them? In the movie version, the officer would eyeball Lisa struggling through labor, scoop her onto the handlebars of his motorcycle, and blast her off to the ER).
At the hospital, a nurse with a wheelchair met the Browns at the front doors. Lisa rejected the wheelchair. She could feel the baby’s head poking into the big bad world — it would make no sense to sit on him. The Browns, with Brent carrying the girls, rushed into the lobby. Only a few yards from the entry doors to the ER, however, Lisa could hold out no longer. It was happening, and it was happening NOW.
“The head’s out!” she shouted. She flopped to the floor in her signature hands-and-knees position. Brent plopped Maybeline and Eleanor onto the floor, still barefoot, and he stooped down to help his wife out of her slacks and underpants.
Brent’s new son, purple-toned, messy, and weighing 6 pounds, 12 ounces, catapulted into Dad’s waiting arms. A maternity nurse scurried down the stairs with her kit. She handed Brent scissors to cut the cord, which proud Dad did with a flourish, after which the nurse clamped the cord. Cheers erupted from people watching from up in the balcony and down in the lobby, including an amazed Mark Tonnesen of Vineyard Haven, pushing his mother in a wheelchair.
Mark told the Times a few weeks later: “At first, I thought a woman was on the floor doing some exercises for whatever pain she was in. I proceeded to wheel my mom into the corridor, but then when I heard screams from the lobby, I parked my mother and hurried back. I asked if I could help, but by then there was plenty of ER staff streaming out. I did see the baby being born. He came out facing up. It was very exciting!”
The whole boffo event, in fact, was filmed on CCTV, and the hospital staff graciously provided the Browns with a copy. As this reporter watched it on Brent’s computer screen, Maybeline and Eleanor jammed in close for their 97th viewing.
Just wait until Harrison is old enough to watch it!
Lisa was lifted onto a gurney. For all the triumph in the room, this poor young mom, delivered of her baby without an epidural or even a nice backrub from Lamaze-trained Daddy, was feeling the aftermath of one huge “Ouch!” Once mother and child were wheeled away, however, Brent resumed holding his two girls in his arms and feeling like Mighty Mouse singing, “Here I am to save the day!” “I just delivered a baby! I can do anything!” was his takeaway, which continues to this day.
Of course, this is not to overlook the heroic efforts of the millions of women around the world who still give birth in open fields and mud-floor huts, but for our gorgeous new hospital facing Vineyard Sound, young Harrison, born in the lobby, was a first. The only missing component was the occasional musician brought in to tickle the ivories of the grand piano.