Amy Beth Cavaretta told photographer and friend Emily Robinson that she went fast delivering her first daughter.
She went faster with her second.
Robinson was on hand to document the thrilling event with her camera as Cavaretta gave birth to 7-pound, 4-ounce Sienna Grace near Boca Raton Regional Hospital on Friday morning.
That’s right: “near” the hospital.
Mom, unable to walk across a driveway from her car to the hospital’s front door, delivered the child, with the help of midwife Laurie Ross-Berke, on the sidewalk as she grasped onto the arms of a wheelchair.
The News spoke with Cavaretta by phone Sunday at her home in Fort Lauderdale. “I’m holding a beautiful little girl,” she said, and sounded like she was ready to go bowling.
Although the 36-year old said the adventure “wasn’t the way we would have planned it,” it wasn’t a total surprise. “I had a fast labor with [first daughter] Sophia, only six hours, we all felt this would go a lot faster … but I didn’t expect it to go this fast,” she said.
Things began evolving — quickly — on Thursday evening, with Cavaretta at home with her husband, Joe, and her chatting on the phone with Robinson, who had been planning to accompany Mom to the hospital when the time came.
“About 11, the contractions were coming five minutes apart,” Cavaretta said, but she wasn’t freaking; just another evening at the Cavarettas’.
“Emily got here 20 minutes later. By the time she got here I couldn’t talk through my contractions,” she said.
Husband Joe was roused from his slumber to start the car, and Cavaretta’s water broke. She called the midwife to meet her at the hospital. Like, now.
“Right away, my contractions were non-stop, and very painful,” she said. “It was a 25-minute drive to the hospital. It was unbelievable, the longest 25 minutes of my life.
“We got to the hospital, I stepped out of the car, felt a massive contraction, I was leaning over the car, all we had to do was cross the driveway to get to the door. ‘I don’t think I can make it,’ I said. ‘I can’t go six steps right now.’
“I thought, I can’t be having a baby now, I’ve only been in labor two hours.”
She made it, with help, to a pillar near the door. “I said, ‘Lori, the head’s out.'”
Two serious pushes later – after Cavaretta grabbed onto the arms of the wheelchair, but didn’t actually sit in it -baby arrived, Ross-Berke took care of the umbilical cord “and put Sienna in my arms. Then we walked into the hospital, past a very freaked-out security guard.”
“She wasn’t panicked,” said Robinson. “She was amazing! And just as calm and collected was her midwife, who was miraculously waiting at the door for us when we arrived.
“It was the first time I ever saw a mother be wheeled INTO the hospital holding her new baby.”
Robinson’s photos, which can also be viewed on her blog, make a dramatic, and affectionate, chronicle of one family’s special event.
