I-65 Twins Celebrate Birthday With First Responders

It was a chilly, snowy night two years ago that Anne Howard and her mom, Lynn Power, were racing up I-65 desperately trying to make it to the hospital before Howard’s twins were born. But after getting stopped for speeding, the twin girls were delivered in an ambulance on the side of the road. According to the first responders that night, had Howard and Power not been stopped when they were, the babies would have been born in her minivan without any help from medical personnel. “By the time the officer opened the door, the first baby was crowning,” Howard said just days after the roadside birth. “Thankfully he pulled us over, because he suggested we call 911 and EMS arrived in five minutes. I don’t know what would have happened if they hadn’t gotten to us when they did.” Friday, Howard, her mom, her two boys and her twin girls, Brooklynn and Heidi, wanted to celebrate the girls’ second birthday by bringing coffee and donuts to the first responders who delivered her babies. “We wanted to do something special for the guys involved with the twins’ birth two years ago,” she said. “While coffee and donuts are such small things, what they did for the twins and me was huge! I wanted them to know that even though it has been two years since that night on interstate 65, these men will forever be a part of our family and our daughters’ lives.” WMC EMS paramedics Michael Cooke and Scott Barnes, and then EMS Supervisor Michael Fletcher, along with Williamson County Sherriff’s Deputy Ray Dilworth, Brentwood Fire Lieutenant John LoPiccolo, paramedic Josh North and EMT Bobby Woodard were all involved in the delivery that night.

Most of them were able to attend Friday’s celebration and everyone in attendance shared the same sentiment that it was hard to believe two years had passed since that night on the highway. As the group swapped memories of the night, Barnes said although he had performed several in-the-field births, it was a 20-year career first to deliver twins. “This event was a first for my career,” he said. “It was a super adrenaline rush that was the scariest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I’ve also never had this type of relationship with a patient after the fact, so getting to see these two girls grow up is amazing. I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get invited to both of their weddings!” LoPiccolo agreed that in their line of work they tend to be present for a traumatic event. “We don’t always get to see the outcomes of the events we are involved in, so this is so nice,” he said. Williamson Medical Center, a 185-bed hospital fully accredited by The Joint Commission, provides comprehensive inpatient and outpatient care including emergency services, with credentialed physicians in 53 specialties and sub-specialties. The community-focused hospital offers a wide range of wellness services, screenings and classes and in the summer of 2015 will open the doors to Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital Vanderbilt at Williamson Medical Center. For more information visit www.williamsonmedicalcenter.org.

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