Posted by chicagomedia.org on October 13, 2009 at 14:42:34:
October 13, 2009
BY LEWIS LAZARE | Chicago Sun-Times Media & Marketing Columnist
Judy Hsu, co-anchor of ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7's morning show, gave birth at 4:09 a.m. Tuesday to a baby boy, Alexander James, in a car parked along the Eisenhower Expressway.
After Hsu went into labor around 3 a.m., she and her husband Tracy immediately departed their home west of the city for Northwestern Hospital, but soon realized they would be unable to make it to the hospital in time for the birth. So the couple pulled over on the expressway near the Cicero exit, and Tracy delivered the baby, who already has been given the nickname "Ike" after the road on which he was born.
Hsu's long tenure on WLS's morning show apparently came in handy during the unusual birth. Husband Tracy recalled a segment on the show about another couple who successfully delivered a child on the roadside. In that segment, the husband used shoelaces to tie off the mother's umbilical cord, and Tracy did likewise with a shoelace from the sneakers he was wearing. The procedure worked perfectly.
Paramedics arrived just as Judy Hsu finished giving birth and subsequently took the mother and her new boy to a suburban hospital, where they are doing fine.
Alexander James is Judy Hsu's and her husband's fourth child. They now have two boys and two girls.