His Wife in Labor, Husband Jumps in Front of Snowplow

Hugh Dawson did what he had to do to get his wife to the hospital
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 9, 2017 12:40 PM CST

A winter storm led to icy, snowy conditions throughout much of the South over the weekend, and for one North Carolina couple it proved more than a minor inconvenience, the AP reports. Stephanie Dawson, 28, went into labor at around 3:30 Sunday morning at her home in Moyock, per the Virginian-Pilot, and their saga to get to the hospital began. It took her husband, Hugh, a good 20 minutes to get rid of the ice on their car, and, after getting Stephanie's sister-in-law to come watch their 4-year-old daughter, they began the 40-minute drive to their hospital. They soon realized they weren't going to make it there, so Hugh pulled off the highway to get to a closer medical center—but as he drove onto the exit ramp, the truck died. "I didn't know the truck had broken down," Stephanie says. "He just hopped out of the truck."

What Hugh was doing was trying to catch the attention of a snowplow that was going the other way, leaping in front of it to catch the driver's attention. "Please, please, please give us a ride," Hugh begged the driver after explaining their situation, to which the driver replied, "Come on in." The plow dropped the Dawsons off at Virginia's Chesapeake Regional Medical Center, where the front door was locked. They finally found the ER, which had an open door, and Stephanie was rushed inside, where she gave birth to baby boy Brayden about 15 minutes later, just before 5:30am—and just two hours after their snowy sojourn began. They now hope to find out the name of the snowplow company and the driver. If he hadn't come along when he did, Stephanie says she likely would've had Brayden right "in the middle of Battlefield Boulevard walking here." (Luckily, this didn't happen in Beijing.)

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