Utah mom gives birth to baby girl in car during snowstorm

DEWEYVILLE, Utah - Baby Kennedy Lou couldn’t wait for her parents to get to the hospital to join the world, even if it meant mom and dad had to pull off a snowy mountain pass for mom to give birth in the front seat.

"We were scheduled to have Katie be induced on Friday, but unfortunately that didn't necessarily happen because Thursday night, unexpectedly, Katie's water broke," said father, Cade Walker. "Little did we know there was going to be a lot of snow, it was enough to slow down traffic." 

Katie Walker’s water broke at 9:40 p.m. at their home about an hour north of Salt Lake City. The couple grabbed their bags (packed for the next day) and took the mountain pass to the hospital. "But Katie, she felt that baby was coming, so we knew we needed to pull over to the side of the road."

The couple called 9-1-1 to walk them through the delivery of their third child. The dispatcher told Cade on the phone to tie off the umbilical cord, "And I looked around and I didn't really know what we could grab. I didn't have a shoelace or anything that would have taken too long, but I did see a mask," recalled Cade Walker. "I pulled off the elastic off that mask then we went ahead and used that to tie up the umbilical cord."

"It does help that I am a medical student. I'm in my fourth-year rotations right now, and so I have a little bit of experience under my belt, you know, helped out with a number of different deliveries," said Cade Walker. "However, it was in a lot different conditions, a lot different circumstances than this one."

Daughter Kennedy Lou was born at 10:40, just an hour after leaving home. Mom and baby are both healthy and now at home. 

"It's like she didn't even know; it was a weird feeling," said Katie Walker about her daughter born in a car.