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Surprise of a lifetime
Tuesday, July 29, started out as just another routine day for Peyton and Harlee Stull.
Before the day was out, however, they had a miraculous story to tell about the birth of their son all alone along a rural roadside.
Nine months pregnant, Harlee had spent the morning folding laundry, freezing jalapenos, and canning tomatoes at their home near Athelstan. Knowing her due date was the next day, she had scheduled a checkup for Thursday if the baby hadn’t arrived by then.
Meanwhile, Peyton was over 50 miles away in a bucket truck doing overhead wiring work in Beaconsfield.
After putting their daughter Nora down for a nap around one o’clock, Harlee noticed that her contractions were getting worse, to the point where she felt the need to call Peyton.
Peyton told her to start for Greater Regional Medical Center in Creston, and he would meet her on the way.
Anxious to get to Harlee, Peyton dropped off his co-worker at the shop in Mount Ayr and raced toward Athelstan.
As luck would have it, he got stopped by a state trooper on the route. “I told him my wife’s going into labor, and I need to go pick her up. And he’s like, well, slow it down just a little bit for me, please.”
Only about 30 minutes after receiving her call, Peyton met up with Harlee and her mother at Highway 2, north of Athelstan, where Harlee jumped into the front seat of Peyton’s pickup.
The Creston hospital was still nearly 40 miles away, and the ride there was tense.
“There wasn’t a lot of conversation,” Peyton said. “I was just going 70-75, and then I could tell the contractions were getting real bad.”
“After we got past Clearfield, things were not looking good,” said Harlee. “I was kind of standing in the seat.”
Finally, at the intersection of Highway 25 and Highway 34, Harlee told Peyton to pull over and stop.
“My water broke,” recalled Harlee, “and so I said, yeah, it’s happening right now.”
“So I pulled over and ran around the truck,” Peyton said. “She pushed one time, and then I caught him.”
At that moment, John David Stull came into this world at a healthy 7 pounds, 15 ounces.
“We made sure that the cord wasn’t wrapped around him,” said Peyton, “and then we wrapped a towel around him, and hit his back a little bit until he cried, and then I handed him back to her and headed to Creston.”
Peyton had called 911 when he first pulled over, and the dispatcher told him to stay right there and wait for the ambulance.
“I’m not gonna do that,” he had told the dispatcher. “‘I mean, it’s gonna take 30 minutes for you to get here, and I’ll be in Creston by then.’ So I just kept driving to Creston.”
About a mile out of Creston, they met the emergency responders – a fire truck, four or five police vehicles, and a couple of ambulances. At that point, Harlee and John David were transferred to an ambulance to complete the trip to the hospital.
Peyton noted that all the way through town, city workers had blocked all the intersections to allow for the safe passage of the ambulance.
Peyton recalled what one responder told him during the transfer.
“We’re glad that you guys did this, because we don’t like to deliver babies,” he told Peyton. He added that this was only the second time in his 25 years as a responder that he had been involved in a roadside birth.
Both Harlee and John David were admitted to the hospital for routine observation, and only 24 hours later, both were discharged to go home, happy and healthy.
As years pass by, the Stull family will always have a story to tell about that special July afternoon.
In the future, though, when John David is asked for his birthplace, he will certainly have some explaining to do.
