This California fire evacuee planned a home birth. Instead, she had her baby at a hotel
A California hotel ended up hosting one more wildfire evacuee than it thought it had after Rachel Page and her husband checked in over the weekend.
Page gave birth to a girl at a hotel in downtown Napa with her midwives’ help on Monday, two days after she and her husband fled their Windsor home because of the encroaching Kincade Fire in Northern California.
It was a joyous moment for Rachel and her husband, James — though maybe a little startling for neighboring guests. Hotel staff didn’t know of the birth, the couple said, and the front desk called the room to check on them when it received a noise complaint.
“Our midwives answered the phone and were like, ‘Oh, yeah, no, we’re fine. We just had a baby,'” James told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota in an interview on “New Day” Friday.
“I was not quiet,” Rachel acknowledged. “So, I’m sure it was alarming to them.”
The infant, Penelope, is the couple’s second daughter.
The Pages had planned to have the baby at home with midwives. But the Kincade Fire — one of numerous wind-driven blazes burning in California in recent days — forced the couple and tens of thousands of other people to flee, many under evacuation orders.
The Pages initially went to stay at a friend’s home on Saturday, but with the baby coming along, they checked into the Andaz Napa hotel on Sunday at their midwives’ suggestion, the Napa Valley Register reported.
Hotel staff indeed didn’t know Rachel was there to give birth, because they generally don’t ask questions about why guests are there, an employee who answered the phone said Friday. A message that CNN left with a manager wasn’t immediately returned.
The midwives, Rachel said, cleaned the room. “You would never know that anyone gave birth in there,” she said.
The couple checked out of the hotel Wednesday to reunite with their 2-year-old daughter, who was staying with relatives in Sacramento, CNN affiliate KPIX reported.
By Friday, the family had moved back in to their Windsor home, untouched by the Kincade Fire.
“We’re doing really good, especially because we were able to go back to our home. So that’s been really nice for us to be able to get settled in,” Rachel told CNN.
