By Julie Sherwood
Daily Messenger
SENECA, N.Y. — The Heitmann family got a big surprise Monday night.
With their baby due May 19, Holly Heitmann didn’t think too much of it when she felt a few contractions in the early evening Monday. But not long after her husband Kyle got home from work, she knew it was time to go. They called Holly’s mom, who lives just down the road from their house on Savage Road in the town of Seneca, to look after their son Logan, 1, and quickly pulled themselves together.
As they headed out the door, Holly’s water broke on the front porch.
“It all happened quickly,” she said.
Holly got in the passenger seat of their Chevy Silverado and with Kyle at the wheel they headed west on Routes 5 and 20 toward Canandaigua and Thompson Hospital. They didn’t get far. The hospital was still about 12 miles away when Kyle asked, “Do we need to pull over?”
“Yup, you do,” Holly said.
An ambulance volunteer with EMT training, Kyle jumped into action. He pulled over near Old Mill Road where there’s a summer cabbage stand, turned on his radio and called the dispatcher. “I need an ambulance,” he said. Within minutes, before the ambulance arrived, Kyle and Holly welcomed baby Wyatt Jacob Heitmann into the world — from the passenger side of the pickup truck.
“There was his head, his shoulders, his arms ...,” recalled Holly. “We both caught him.”
A sweatshirt from the back seat of the truck was Wyatt’s first blanket. “He cried. We rubbed his back,” Holly said.
Kyle, who is captain of Stanley, Hall, Gorham Ambulance Service, knew the ambulance crew who arrived. “There were no unfamiliar faces, which was nice,” he said.
Holly’s mom, Jackie Bakker, said she got a text from Kyle shortly after Wyatt was born at 10:38 p.m. It said: “We had a baby. By the side of the road.”
She couldn’t believe it.
At Thompson, Wyatt weighed in at 6 pounds, 13 ounces and measured 20 inches. On Tuesday, grandmothers Bakker and Karen Heitmann, along with Logan, Wyatt and his parents, enjoyed some time together — Wyatt letting out a big yawn nestled in his dad’s arms. Logan, who turns 2 in June, was getting lots of attention, too, as a new big brother.
They all talked about the unusual birth. Bakker said she was still marveling at how it happened.
“It’s surreal,” she said.
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