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Community Corner

Baby on Board!

Family celebrates three-year anniversary of roadside delivery.

Centreville chiropractor William Turner wasn’t thinking about his taxes three years ago on April 15 as he rushed his wife to Inova Fair Oaks Hospital at the height of rush hour. They were racing the clock to get Julia Turner to the maternity ward in time to deliver their fifth child.

They didn’t make it. Instead, Turner pulled out of heavy traffic on Interstate 66, found a break in the guardrail and turned their Yukon Denali into a delivery room.

“It's one of the lifetime events that you will never forget,” Turner said. “It’s one of those memories that I will cherish every day.”

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The roadside delivery wasn’t what they had planned. That morning, Julia had gone into labor, but the contractions were sporadic and from previous experience, they knew she could be in labor for a long time. Turner left their Oakton home to check on patients at his clinic in Centreville, leaving her with her parents who had come to visit. At about 5 p.m. Julia called and told her husband to get home. 

By the time they had collected everything and were headed back out, the contractions were coming quicker and Turner had to navigate through the thick westbound commuter traffic on the freeway.

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Just as they got onto the freeway, “she said, ‘I think the baby’s coming,’" said Turner.

‘“Just hold on,’” I told her,” Turner said, “but she said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it’ and she started taking off her pants." 

Displaying cool resolve, Turner pulled the Denali onto the roadside while dialing 911 and getting an operator. Paramedics were called, but things were happening fast and it looked like Turner was going to be alone in assisting his wife in the delivery.

“Just as I walked around to my wife’s side of the car, the baby’s head was crowning,” Turner said. “I was helping Julia and had the phone scrunched up on my left shoulder talking to the 911 guy. It was good having someone talking into my ear.”

Obstetrics was not something that the Turners learned in chiropractic school. They attended school together and have been in joint practice a little more than 18 years. This was their fifth child and while it was a high-risk delivery, they were both old pros, he said.

As the baby came out, the 911 operator told him to make sure the umbilical cord wasn’t wrapped around the baby’s neck, and it was not, Turner said. After the baby was born, a little girl, he placed her on Julia’s chest and wrapped her in a clean sweater he pulled from the back seat while turning on the vehicle’s heater full-blast. The paramedics arrived about five minutes after that.

Mary Kathryn Turner turned three this Friday and seems well-adjusted despite her unorthodox entry into this world. She is joined by three brothers, John Paul, 16; Joseph, 14; and James, 5, as well as one sister, Grace, 10.

These days, Turner remembers the delivery every time he passes the spot on I-66.

“We had been through deliveries before, but this one was a little scarier,” Turner said. “But, you know, even as I was pulling off the road, I just thinking that we gotta do this thing.”

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