A story to melt your heart: Military mom nearly gives birth while stuck on I-25

Miles Blumhardt | The Coloradoan

Show Caption Hide Caption Pregnant Colorado military mom nearly gives birth on Interstate 25 The Air Force captain was stuck in a traffic jam and with contractions quickening, she needed to get to the hospital fast.

Having your first child can be stressful enough.

Then there's the stress Windsor couple and military members Kendra and Zachary Jennings went through to have their first baby.

Consider this:

Kendra was having increasingly intense contractions while stuck in a huge traffic jam on Interstate 25.

Then a 911 dispatcher they had on the line told her to untie a shoelace so her mom could tie off the umbilical cord in case the baby came.

All the while Zachary was frantically flying from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Fort Collins, only knowing bits and pieces of the chaotic scene.

The couple laughs about it now, but on Nov. 7 it was far from a laughing matter.

"For the first baby it's crazy as it is," Kendra said. "But the fact we are stuck on I-25 in this huge line of traffic and not knowing whether or not we could get out in time or whether or not I’m going to have this baby right here in the car, it was intense and kind of scary."

'It was like a Chinese fire drill'

Kendra, an Air Force captain based at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, and her mother, Nancy Smith, were returning to Fort Collins from Colorado Springs where Smith lives.

I-25 traffic was its usual stop-and-go out of Denver, but Kendra told her mom the contractions were far apart and that they had time to stop at her north Windsor home for a bowl of cereal before going to UCHealth's Poudre Valley Hospital to check in.

But that bowl of cereal was going to have to wait.

Traffic slowed to a stop when the mother and daughter had just passed the Crossroads Boulevard exit in north Loveland about 5 p.m. They believed the stoppage was due to construction and heavy commuter traffic, but then the short wait turned into a long wait just as Kendra's contraction interval went from long to short.

What they didn't know was a six-vehicle pileup on northbound I-25 at the Colorado Highway 392 interchange was snowballing into a massive traffic buildup that eventually stretched south to near U.S. Highway 34. The crash closed the interstate for more than two hours.

After about 45 minutes sitting there with her contractions intensifying, Kendra called her care team.

"I called my nurse and told her my contractions were really kicking in and we were stopped on the interstate," said Kendra, who was driving at the time. "She said to just get here when you can. Then she called me back 5 minutes later and told me the interstate was closed due to a crash and to try and get comfortable."

So Kendra and her mother, who was wearing a protective boot on her foot, switched positions, right there in the middle of I-25.

"It was like a Chinese fire drill," Kendra said. "My mom with her boot climbing over the center console and me getting out and walking around the car to get in the passenger seat."

The pain was becoming unbearable and though Kendra didn't want to her to do it, her mother knew it was time to dial 911.

"We started the trip singing and harmonizing to Pentatonix,'' Smith said. "Then it got to the point that she could no longer sing because of the contractions and then she couldn't hardly speak."

The 911 dispatcher on the car's speaker phone said an ambulance was coming southbound on I-25, and firefighters were coming northbound, but because of the traffic it would take some time to reach them.

Then the dispatcher asked an unsettling question.

"She first asked if we could see anything coming out, was I bleeding, did my water break?" Kendra said. "I didn't see anything. Then she asked if I had a shoelace. I said I had tennis shoes on and the dispatcher said to take one off because my mom would need it to tie off the umbilical cord if the baby is born."

Smith about lost it.

"My heart leaped into my throat,'' Smith said. "I thought, 'this is not happening.'''

Kendra placed the shoelace in the console cup holder and waited for help.

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'Don't worry, ambulance on the way'

Those aren't exactly the words you want to hear when your wife is having contractions and you're in the middle of a two-hour Southwest Airlines flight from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where Zachary is an Army specialist, to Denver International Airport.

Zachary had quickly changed his flight from the morning of Nov. 8 to the evening Nov. 7 once he learned of Kendra’s contractions.

He had received a text from Kendra about how traffic was slow just north of Denver and that she was starting to have contractions, but he didn’t know that Kendra and her mom were stuck near Loveland.

Zachary explained his situation to the Southwest employee at the ticket counter by the gate. He allowed Zachary to board the flight first, and the flight attendants sat him up front so he could immediately start texting Kendra to see how things were going.

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About 45 minutes into the flight, Zachary received a text from Kendra that cryptically read, in part, "kind of panicked, don’t worry, ambulance on the way."

"I have no idea what is happening and now I’m really freaking out," Zachary said. "I didn’t know if the baby had already come and I was very distracted."

That’s when the guy sitting next to him advised Zachary to text Kendra a photo of him smiling and tell her how happy he was to be having their child as a way to relieve her tension

"She sent back a photo of her with a lot of pain on her face," Zachary said. "The guy sitting next to me saw how worked up I was after seeing her photo. So he talked to a flight attendant about my situation and they took me to the back of the plane and let me use their WiFi so I could FaceTime her. It was awesome that they did this."

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'Absolutely, I will use it against her'

Despite what the 911 dispatcher told her, Kendra and her mom couldn’t see the ambulance coming from the north or the fire engine behind her because of the long backup and large number of first-responder vehicles tending to the crash.

She and her mom turned on the car’s hazard lights to make themselves more visible. With Kendra kneeling and facing backwards in the passenger seat of the new Kia Sorrento the couple bought in August, her thoughts turned to not wanting to ''mess up'' the car by having a baby in it.

In desperation, Smith got out of the car and hopped on one foot to a vehicle and asked if anyone had ever delivered a baby. Not surprising, the answer was no.

Then a vehicle pulled up beside them from the side of the road. Firefighters had hitched a ride from a person who drove them up to Kendra's vehicle. A firefighter took her vitals and then reluctantly told Kendra he would have to see if the baby was coming out.

"He was like, 'I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ask you to disrobe from the waist down to see what's going on,''' Smith said. "Kendra didn't want to do it, but she knew she had no choice. The next thing you know he is talking in his radio, saying, 'She's 7 centimeters or more, water is bulging but not broken. We need an ambulance.'"

First responders ran and got a gurney. They covered Kendra as best they could and wheeled her through the standstill traffic on I-25 to a place where they could lift her over the concrete barriers in the median to a stretcher. Once they got her over, they placed her into a Thompson Valley EMS ambulance and whisked her a short distance to UCHealth's Medical Center of the Rockies instead of PVH.

Kendra wanted Zachary to be there for the birth of their first child, so she asked for an epidural to slow the contractions.

Zachary landed in Denver at 9 p.m. and his dad, who lives in Fort Collins, picked him up and got him to MCR by 10:30 p.m.

"When we were getting ready to get off the plane, the flight attendant got on the intercom and announced for people to stay seated and that I was going to get off first because I needed to get to the hospital because my wife was going to have a baby,'' Zachary said. "It was a big deal and everyone clapped and I got embarrassed."

Kendra's water broke about 30 minutes after Zachary arrived. With Kendra pushing and Zachary ready to help with the delivery, the couple welcomed a healthy 7-pound, 9-ounce baby girl, Ava Renae, to the family at 2:41 a.m., Nov. 8 — a week ahead of schedule.

It's a story the couple, who married Dec. 22, 2018, in Fort Collins, will always be extra thankful for, given what could have happened.

"The whole experience was amazing,'' Zachary said. "It was really cool to see my little child come into the world.''

Kendra, Zachary and Ava will be spending Thanksgiving Day at Smith's home in Colorado Springs, where undoubtedly Ava's birthing story will be told and retold.

"Absolutely (we will tell her the story); I will use it against her," Kendra said laughing. "It’s something we will remember forever for sure and I’m sure she will appreciate the fact she was keeping us on our toes from the very beginning."

Miles Blumhardt looks for stories that impact your life — be it news, outdoors, sports, you name it he wants to report it. Have a story idea, send it his way. Email him at milesblumhardt@coloradoan.com or find him on Twitter at @MilesBlumhardt. If you find value in these stories, support Miles and the other journalists at the Coloradoan by subscribing at Coloradoan.com/subscribe.