He’s a rocker by day, but midwife…er, midhusband?…by night! Nick Hexum, frontman of the band 311, had to rely on quick thinking to deliver their baby girl, Maxine Vita, when his wife Nikki went into sudden labor.
“After Max’s head popped out, the delivery stalled for the next couple of contractions. The baby’s head was blue and the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck,” he said of the May 1 birth. "I was worried the cord was choking her, keeping blood from getting to her brain.”
Luckily Hexum, who watched the birth of his first daughter, Echo, 21 months ago, could recall what to do and went into super-daddy mode. “I knew from observing and listening the first time around that sometimes the baby’s shoulder would get caught and they would have to reach in there and break its collar bone to free her,” he said. “I reached my fingers in there and felt the shoulders and rotated the baby back and forth.”
After his little girl “slid out smoothly” she was still not moving. “I jiggled her around until I heard a ‘wahhh!’ It was an amazing moment,” the proud papa recalled.
The midwife finally arrived a mere ten minutes later and cut the umbilical cord.
“Everything was fine!” Hexum, 41, said happily. ”We never went to the hospital. We just sat in bed laughing and crying tears of joy about what a crazy experience it was.”
