Rescue convoy makes safe baby delivery possible
Published: March 9, 2007
Delivering Cindy Masching to the hospital proved to be a far more difficult task than delivering her son into the world.
Owen James Masching was born at a Carroll hospital at 7:20 a.m. Friday thanks to a host of snowmobilers, plow drivers and others who endured high winds and 17 inches of snow.
“We’re just lucky we know some very enthusiastic snowmobilers,” Scott Masching said not long after reaching the hospital with his wife. “I don’t think anyone’s going to forget this ride for a while.”
The couple had planned for a delivery at the hospital Thursday, but a blizzard that descended over western Iowa forced a delay.
No problem, they thought, Cindy Masching was feeling fine so they’d just try again Friday.
But she felt back pain upon going to bed around 10:30 p.m. Thursday, and the discomfort worsened when she got up about three hours later.
“At 2:15 I heard this loud pop,” she said.
It was her water breaking.
Owen wasn’t waiting.
The Maschings phoned the hospital, the communications center and their doctor, John Evans, to see whether it was possible to get Cindy to the hospital.
Scott Masching and hospital staff also called friends in the Breda area. They formed a posse of snowmobilers who went to Evans home in rural Mount Carmel and brought him several miles to a spot where a Breda Fire Department four-wheel-drive truck drove him to the Masching home. Evans said he held on while the group ramped many snow drifts.
“I felt like I was royalty the way they treated me,” Evans said. “I had two sterile gloves and my overnight bag. They brought me a helmet and off we went.”
Volunteers from Breda’s ambulance and fire departments responded to the Masching home, and a city snowplow was dispatched to clear the way.
Through it all, Cindy Masching’s contractions were getting closer: five minutes, then four, then three, then two.
The volunteers got her into an ambulance, and when plows cleared the street that connects Breda to U.S. 71, the trucks got ahead of the ambulance and the caravan set off for Carroll.
One plow slid into a ditch, and it took about 15 minutes for another plow to join the formation. About three miles farther south, the second plow got stuck. It took about a half-hour for a loader to clear the road there.
It took about two hours to make the approximately 15-mile journey from Breda.
“The view out the windshield on an ambulance when you’re following a snowplow is interesting,” Scott Masching said. “I’m glad Cindy was facing backward.
The ambulance arrived at St. Anthony Regional Hospital at 7:10 a.m., and Owen was born 10 minutes later.
“He was coming out as I was coming in” to the hospital, Cindy Masching said.
Mother and child are fine.
Scott Masching, noting that he’s a Breda firefighter and knows everyone who came to the couple’s aid, said he knew the help was going to be first-rate.
“I wasn’t worried,” he said. “I knew they were going to do a good job.”
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