We’ve remarked before on how much bigger Houston is than most other cities. The area covered within the loop of Beltway 8 is big enough to encompass, say, the entire island of Oahu or all of the San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley Bay Area (plus a good bit of the Pacific Ocean). But if you wanted another way to consider just how massive the metropolitan area is, consider this: a couple on their way to the Bay Area Birthing Center, in Pasadena, ended up delivering their baby in the car, on the Beltway, because they couldn’t make it from their home in Lake Jackson on time.
That’s a remarkable thing, and even more remarkable is that the entire live birth was captured on video by Jonathan Pettijohn, whose wife, Lesia, went into labor as he navigated the traffic on Beltway 8 en route to the hospital.
The video runs four minutes in length, and somehow Pettijohn managed to capture the entire thing in a safe-for-work (if still fairly intense) shot. It’s an incredible thing to see—it starts off as a couple sitting in traffic, albeit during a tense ride, and then shortly after the two-minute mark, it’s a video of three people in a car, still on their way to the hospital.
If you’re into the whole “miracle of childbirth” thing, this is a fascinating look at it. Without any of the elements that frame it as a medical experience, the birth and delivery of a baby is a thing that, for some, can just happen when the baby is ready to come out.
At the very least, the experience of spending endless minutes and hours in traffic is a huge part of being in Houston—so, really, is there a more Houston way to deliver your baby than in the passenger seat of your SUV?
