My mom loves to tell birth stories. Has she told you about my birth? I was over a month over due and the doctor finally decided to induce me because he had tickets to a baseball game and didn’t want to miss it. Or how my older brother (who was born in Heidelberg, Germany) made a rainbow of urine across the hospital room and hit the window moments after he was born. Or the day my younger brother was born two months premature and his heart stopped a few times in the intensive care unit. Well, my mom has a new story to tell. My wife, Karna, gave birth to our third child, a boy, on July 10, at about 6:15 p.m. His name is Easton Davis Palmer, and from the beginning, he took the world by storm. Our adventure started in late June, when we tried to encourage Easton to come out. The inducing process took two days, and did not work. We returned home with no baby. This is not the most enjoyable experience for a mother who is 9+ months pregnant. In the early morning hours of July 10, Karna’s water broke, and we checked back into the same hospital room we had been in about 10 days earlier. “I’m not leaving this place without a baby in my hands,” my wife told the doctor. Despite the water breaking, the baby still didn’t want to come out, so we began the inducing process again. After about 5-6 hours of labor, the moment was drawing near. Karna’s parents and my mom and step dad had arrived at the hospital and were awaiting the big news. Other family members and friends were waiting by their phones. I dropped into the waiting room to tell them that we were close to “showtime” when I noticed the weatherman on the TV. “Tornado watches are turning to tornado warnings in west central Minnesota as severe storms are popping up throughout the area,” he said. I came back to the room as the hospital staff was laying out their delivery tools. One of the nurses calmly walked over to the window and closed the shade. “We are in a tornado warning,” she whispered the doctor, as he was slipping on his gloves. Within a few minutes, Karna was pushing and baby Easton came a short time later. “It’s a boy,” the doctor said. I cut the umbilical cord and they set Easton on Karna’s chest. I jogged down the hall to tell everyone in the waiting room the news, but the waiting room was empty. “They are all down in the basement,” said a nurse, moving a patient toward the elevator. So I ran down to the basement and gave them a quick report — sex and name. I told them I would get more details later and ran upstairs. As I returned to the room, they were preparing Karna for a move. “We need to move you,” said the doctor. “We are in a tornado warning.” “They have spotted funnel clouds in the area,” said a nurse. It would be Easton’s first family trip. They laid a blanket over Karna, legs still up in the air, and we headed down the hall. The doctor still had work to do on Karna, so we couldn’t go downstairs with the rest of the patients and staff. Instead, we scooted down the hall to the clinic part of the building and found a hallway that was away from window and skylights. There, the doctor and nurses finished up their work on Karna and continued checking up on Easton. “Eight pounds, 11 ounces,” said a nurse, after finding a scale in the clinic. The next couple hours were spent in the hallway of the clinic with the delivery team. I had my cell phone, so I called all the family members and we waited for the storm to pass. Hail was hitting skylights and you could hear the wind whistle. It was a nice storm. And it didn’t pass over very quickly. After a while, a nurse retrieved some cans of pop for everyone. And our doctor searched the clinic for some food. He found some Scooby Doo fruit snacks and we shared a pack. We were allowed back into our room around 8:15 p.m. We had left our other two boys at a friend’s house for the day. When I went over to pick them up that night, there was a huge double rainbow over the city of Glenwood. I guess you could call it a “wink from God.” Baby Easton is doing well. He is putting on weight and sleeping well. And when he is old enough, his grandmother will have a great story to tell him. A special thank you goes out to Glacial Ridge Hospital and the medical team. They did an excellent job.
top of page
bottom of page