How a Dallas woman gave birth in her car at the Lakewood Bank of America

The birth of Danielle Avram’s second child didn’t exactly go as planned.

As her husband sped to the hospital in thickening rush hour traffic, Avram realized her daughter would enter this world in the front seat of the couple’s car.

In the parking lot outside the Lakewood Bank of America, she gave birth to a healthy 6-pound, 14-ounce baby girl named Frances Fern.

Avram, who chronicled her delivery for the Dallas Morning News, always envisioned a drug-free birth. But avoiding the hospital all together was never part of the plan.

The Dallas writer said she spent the morning of Sept. 7 packing and relaxing before life would get significantly busier. When the contractions became overwhelming, she called her husband to come home. It was time to go to the hospital.

Facing backward in the front seat, her husband drove down Garland onto Gaston and then to Abrams. (They presumably defied death and safely navigated the Garland-Gaston-Grand intersection.)

“I could tell the baby was on the way, and I was fighting a losing battle,” Avram wrote for the Morning News. “Every part of my body wanted her out, and I had no choice but to give in to my instincts.”

Her husband was so frazzled that he, understandably, rear-ended the car in front of him. He pulled into the bank and yelled, “My wife is having a baby,” as he ran to open the passenger door. He ripped off the handle and pried open the locked door using the remaining pieces, Avram said.

Her husband caught Frances as she was born, just before the paramedics arrived. The couple rode the rest of the way to the hospital in an ambulance, ending what was probably one of the most exciting days at the bank in many years.