Beau Daniel Suppes knows how to make an exciting entrance.
The baby boy was born this morning along westbound Interstate 70 in the front seat of his parents’ pickup truck.
“I told them we weren’t going to make it,” Christine Suppes said she told her husband, Brent, their daughter Leah, 3, and Joe Suppes, Brent’s dad, as they were driving to the hospital.
“The contractions were just getting stronger and stronger,” she recalled during a news conference at the hospital hours later. “He’s coming,” Suppes said she told her family.
The family, from Watkins, phoned 911 for help.
Aurora paramedics and firefighters assisted in the birth at I-70 and Tower Road just after 7 a.m.
“It’s been a different morning,” said paramedic Dave Nehrig, one of those who responded. “It was a scramble.”
Nehrig said in a phone interview that he had just arrived to work at nearby Aurora Fire Station 12 and had poured a cup of coffee when the call about the delivery came.
“It was very exciting,” Brent Suppes said. “All I was thinking was ‘Hurry!’ I wanted to get there (to the hospital) fast. Once we realized that wasn’t going to happen, I was happy the firefighters got there fast.”
When help arrived, Christine Suppes was sitting in a front seat, and her husband was outside directing traffic, Nehrig said.
Nehrig checked on Suppes; she was doing fine. Nehrig and his partner decided to start an oxygen line, he recalled. He turned around to ask for some equipment, turned back and the baby was coming, he said.
“There was no time for anything else,” Nehrig said. “She delivered in the front seat. Two pushes and the baby was out.”
Nehrig, who has been a paramedic for 11 years, seven with Aurora, has helped deliver babies before, but never in a vehicle, he said.
This afternoon at University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Christine Suppes was radiant as she cradled Beau Daniel, whose due date was sometime next week.
“It was amazing,” she said.
She said she had been teasing her husband in recent weeks that she wasn’t going to give birth in their pickup.
Afterward, “I was kind of worried about the mess in the truck,” she said.
Beau Daniel, who weighed in at 6.13 pounds and was 19 inches long, seemed to take everything in stride and slept most of the morning, his family said.
After the truck delivery, the newborn and his parents were taken to the hospital by ambulance. Little Leah followed in the truck with her grandpa driving.
“We did our best to make it, but our son had a different idea,” Brent Suppes said. “He was in a hurry.”
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com
