Crossing Bridges: Cathy’s Birth Story

They lived in southern Indiana. As the time came close for the birth of their first child, she and her husband made detailed plans for short trip to the hospital across the Ohio River in Louisville: the suitcase was packed with all of those items she believed she’d need plus a list of telephone numbers to call all their relatives and friends to announce the birth. Both of their automobiles were kept topped off with gasoline, just in case one wouldn’t run.

The first labor pains came about fifteen minutes after her husband left on his 45 minute drive to work. Their plan was that she would call him as soon as her labor began; she made the call to his office (this was long before the advent of cell phones) and told his secretary to have him call her as soon as he arrived at the office.

Half an hour later, when she had not received a callback from her husband, she telephoned again. His secretary said he had not yet arrived. Another thirty minutes passed and her contractions were coming at an increased frequency. As a nurse, she knew she should be in hospital now. She telephoned again. Her husband’s secretary informed her that the radio had reported a major traffic jam caused by road construction and an overturned truck in which her husband was most probably caught.

She made a decision: she would drive herself to the hospital in Louisville; with the suitcase in her car, she started out toward the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge that crossed the Ohio River into Louisville. The closer she came to the bridge, the more the panic of her phobia gripped her. She was terrified of bridges—not just the Clark Memorial Bridge, but all bridges. She had never in her life been able to drive across a bridge; someone else had always driven her across bridges, while she kept her eyes tightly closed until the driver would say, “It’s OK now. We’re across.”

Her panic became terror. She could not close her eyes and drive across the bridge. Yet the frequency of the contractions was coming faster and faster—much too fast for a first childbirth. When she was in sight of the bridge she realized that she could not drive across it. She turned off the highway onto a side street and drove toward the center of Jeffersonville. She drove until she saw a taxi; she pulled in behind it, climbed out of her car, forgetting the suitcase, and, barely able to walk as another contraction seemed to roll from her back, she went to the taxi and told the driver she had to get to St. Mary’s Hospital across the bridge in Louisville as soon as possible.

The taxi sped toward the Clark Memorial Bridge as she tightly closed in eyes. The birth began before the taxi made it across the bridge. The driver pulled to the side of the bridge and, with the aid of another motorist, assisted in the delivery her first child, a daughter. At some point in giving birth, she opened her eyes and never again felt panic when crossing a bridge.

The above story is supposedly true. It is the “birth story” of a woman named Cathy with whom I attended high school. I heard it when we shared our “birth stories” in a literature class. Cathy ended the story by saying, “So my mom never knew if I was born in Indiana or Kentucky and I tell people I was born somewhere over the Ohio River.”

For some reason I remembered Cathy’s birth story when I heard of the collapse of the Mississippi River bridge in Minnesota's Twin Cities. I thought about the fear, the horror, the panic which must have gripped those on the bridge and those who witnessed its collapse. And I thought of Cathy’s mother and what a hell it would be if someone with her phobia was in one of those automobiles on that bridge spanning the Mississippi River.

Cathy’s birth story had a happy ending. I pray for the victims of yesterday's crumpling of the Mississippi River bridge in Minnesota's Twin Cities.