By SARA CLIFFORD and MAGEN KRITSCH, Brown County Democrat and Daily Journal (Johnson County)
Johnson County’s New Year’s baby was actually a Brown County New Year’s baby who didn’t quite make it to Marion County in time.
On Jan. 1, Kelly Hilligoss, of Spearsville Road in Brown County, delivered a healthy baby boy in her car in a Trafalgar church parking lot with the help of an area firefighter.
Kelly and her husband, Eric, had been on their way to Community South Hospital in Indianapolis, said proud grandma Debbie Hilligoss. Debbie and her husband, Frank, live in Brown County.
Kelly, a nurse working for the Brown County Health Department, had been having contractions the night before, but they had stopped, Debbie said.
“New Year’s Day, she felt great. Everything was fine. But all of a sudden, they hit, and they were quick, and they were hard,” Debbie said.
The couple pulled over at Samaria Christian Church and called for help at 6:06 p.m.
Tyler Sneed, a Trafalgar volunteer firefighter and Franklin full-time firefighter, heard the emergency call about a woman in labor and went straight to the scene. He lives less than a mile from the church.
“She was telling me, we have to go; it’s here,” Sneed told the Daily Journal of Johnson County.
He said he got into the car and asked the woman questions for about 30 seconds. About 90 seconds later, a baby boy was born.
Learning to deliver a baby is part of the training firefighters undergo. “We are trained to do it. It is just one of those things that very rarely happens,” Sneed said. “You hear about it. It just doesn’t happen that often.”
He helped ease out the baby’s head and shoulders and cut the umbilical cord. The baby was born less than 10 minutes after the 911 call came in, Sneed said.
Mom and baby were taken to Community Hospital South.
Debbie said the baby boy, named Henry Reid, was healthy. Mom and baby were expected to be released and back home on Jan. 3. He has a 3-year-old brother, Everett.
Many other relatives live in Brown County; grandparents Barb and Donny Trent live in Indianapolis.
Henry Hilligoss was the first baby born in 2020 in Johnson County.
He’s also most likely the first baby born to a Brown County resident in 2020.
Taylor Hardesty, the records clerk who works with Hilligoss at the Brown County Health Department, said she hadn’t received any birth certificates as of Jan. 3 for any other Brown County babies.
Since Brown County doesn’t have a hospital, it’s rare for the county to claim a New Year’s baby, and births that happen at home in Brown County are “few and far between,” Hardesty said. “We’re lucky if we get one a year.”
