Kyneton local Nancy Mortimer welcomed a new grandchild before Christmas who was in quite a hurry to arrive.
Nancy’s son Anthony and daughter-in-law Rachael live more than 100 kilometres away in St Andrews but had their first child, Xavier, delivered at Castlemaine Hospital and wanted to return there for their second.
When Rachael’s labour began on the morning of December 16, they arrived at Nancy’s house thinking they’d have plenty of time to get to the hospital as Rachael’s labour with Xavier had been 36 hours’ long.
Not so on this occasion, however, and when their doula friend Mary arrived she told them they didn’t have long, so they quickly departed in the car.
They got as far as crossing the Coliban River on the Calder Freeway before they had to pull over and deliver their new baby girl.
“When we told people we were going to come from St Andrews when she started (her labour) everyone said ‘are you sure you don’t want to be closer’ and we said ‘no, no, if we have it on the way there it’ll be fine, it just means it’s come so much quicker and it’s all done!’,” Anthony said.
“It was a huge joke with everyone in our community and they were worried we were driving so far to go to hospital, so for it to actually happen in the car was just a bit ridiculous,” Rachael said.
The couple decided to name their daughter Brindabella after her unusual arrival.
“Brindi means water running over rocks in indigenous Australian and we thought having just gone over the river that was really nice,” Rachael said.
“And Brindabella is also a mountain range in Canberra and we thought the nickname options were great – Brindi, or Belle, or Bella – we thought it’s actually a really good fusion of indigenous and European because they say when you look up the name meaning that the Bella was probably added by the Europeans to the Brindi, so we thought it was a nice fusion, something a bit different.”
All agree the whole adventure will certainly make a good story to tell Brindi when she’s older!
