This baby was eager for independence

By Colleen Gundlach
Photo by Savage Frieze

When Heidi and Andy Crawford first met, it was at Lone Oak Campsites in East Canaan, where she worked as a waitress and he played in a band that performed there. They were both 21 years old, and it wasn’t very long before they were standing on top of a beautiful hill at Lone Oak, exchanging wedding vows in front of 200 guests. Little did they know that, 16 years later, their third child would be born at Lone Oak, just yards from where they were joined in marriage.

At about 8:30 p.m. on July 3, Heidi Crawford, team leader of the Recreation Department at Lone Oak (and nine months pregnant), was standing in front of a crowd of people with 40 brightly decorated golf carts that had just completed a illumination parade. As she addressed the crowd, Crawford could feel the first slight twinges of impending labor. She completed her work, gathered her two sons, Wyatt, 7, and Charlie, 4, joined her husband and headed off to their seasonal campsite on the hill.

It was around 11:30 p.m. when Crawford awoke to labor pains about 10 minutes apart. Since her doctor had told her to call him when the pains were five minutes apart, she didn’t immediately awaken her husband, but after about a half hour, she did call her sister, Amanda Moriarty, who was in the camper next door. Moriarty is a trained doula who was to help coach the Crawfords through the delivery.

That’s when events started to accelerate. “When I stepped out on the deck to meet Amanda, it hit me like a ton of bricks,” says Crawford. “It was a horrible pain that I had never experienced with my first two children.” She describes it as one long labor pain with no break. 

Doctors call this precipitous labor, which science writer Jaime Rochelle Herndon, describes as “the sudden pattern of strong contractions that are very close to one another and don’t let you rest or recover between each one. The pain feels like one long contraction.”

Moriarty, with her doula training, knew immediately what was going on, so they awoke Andy, called their other sister, Suzy (who was also camping at Lone Oak), to care for the sleeping children and headed down the hill. They made it only to the bridge at the entrance to Lone Oak before Moriarty shouted to Andy to stop the car.  With Heidi in the front seat, Moriarty knelt on the ground outside the front door of the car and promptly and efficiently delivered her sister’s 7 lbs. 7 oz. baby boy, Grant Andrew, at 12:58 a.m. on the Fourth of July.

Two state troopers arrived at Lone Oak about five minutes after the baby was born, and the EMTs about 30 minutes later, to find a happy, healthy baby boy, a relieved and slightly stunned mother and father and a very happy doula aunt.  All are doing fine.