• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

Families raced time, blizzard to make it to the hospital

Photo

Brieana Gerblick-Rorig sleeps peacefully Wednesday afternoon at Aurora Lakeland. Her mother, Samantha Gerblick, made a 40-minute ambulance ride from Walworth to Elkhorn before Brieana was born at 10:32 p.m. Tuesday.

Beth Gustafson of Pell Lake holds her newborn son, Gavin, on Wednesday at Aurora Lakeland Medical Center. Gustafson and her husband, Brandon, got a ride from a neighbor, as well as an unofficial escort from a snowplow truck and two police snowmobiles as they rushed to the hospital for Gavin’s birth Wednesday morning. Lisa M. Schmelz photo.

ELKHORN — Babies don’t wait for blizzards. Brieana Gerblick-Rorig and Gavin Gustafson are evidence of that. Both are 2011 blizzard babies and proof that not only does it take a village to raise a child, sometimes it takes a village to deliver one.

Brieana is the daughter of Samantha Gerblick and Joel Rorig of Lake Geneva. Five days away from her due date, Gerblick opted to stay at her parents’ home in Walworth while Rorig, her fiance, was at work at Walgreens in Lake Geneva, where he’s an assistant manager.

When Gerblick’s water broke at 8 p.m. Tuesday, she knew the only way she was going to get to Aurora Lakeland Medical Center in Elkhorn was by ambulance — if even the ambulance could make it there.

“I was scared I was going to have her in the ambulance,” Gerblick said Wednesday from her hospital bed. “We had two tow trucks in front of us and police cars behind us the whole way. It was very hectic and crazy.”

But this blizzard would welcome one more local baby.

On 8:20 a.m. Wednesday, Beth Gustafson of Pell Lake told her husband, Brandon, a parts manager for Equipment Depot, “It’s time.”

“Our street was covered in about 2 feet of snow,” explained Gustafson from her hospital room two doors down from Gerblick. “It hadn’t been plowed yet.”

But, a neighbor trudged through what seemed like a mountain of snow to flag down a plow truck on a nearby street. With the plow truck successfully flagged, another neighbor with a four-wheel drive pickup drove the Gustafsons to Aurora Lakeland Medical Center.

For nearly a mile, the unknown plow-truck driver cleared a path for the Gustafsons from their home to U.S. Highway 12. Once on highway 12, the Gustafsons lucked out to get behind another plow truck and two police officers on snowmobiles.

Read the full story in the e-edition of Walworth County Sunday, PAGE 13.