When firefighter Marc Hadden and his crew arrived on the scene after a South Carolina woman called saying she was experiencing severe abdominal pain, Hadden didn’t expect he’d meet his future daughter. It became clear to Marc and his crew that the woman was in labor–this was back in November 2011.
Recently, however, 47-year-old Hadden was spoke to TODAY about the unusual way he adopted his daughter, explaining:
“It was a pretty serious call for us. We got her on some oxygen, started some IVs, and literally as we were getting ready to leave the parking lot in the ambulance, my partner said, ‘We’re about to deliver a baby right here.'”
And that’s what happened–the crew delivered the woman’s baby–and Hadden was handed the baby girl. However, at the hospital a few hours later, Hadden learned that the mother was planning on putting the baby up for adoption. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, as Hadden and his wife Beth were trying to have a third child, and were considering adoption, according to a statement Beth made to local news station WMBF News). Naturally, they jumped at the chance to adopt the baby girl.
This is exactly what happened when the Haddens took Gracie home a few days later, and by March 2012, she was officially their daughter. Gracie is now 5 and is about to start kindergarten at the school where Beth teaches later this year. Currently, she’s learning gymnastics. The Haddens, however, have already told Gracie about her birth story, as Marc explained:
“We have never hidden it from her. If you ask her where she was born, she says, ‘My daddy delivered me in the back of an ambulance.’ She knows the whole story. I wanted her to know as soon as she was old enough to understand.
She is part of our family and that is absolutely the way it is. We love her.”
I’m glad Gracie is part of such a loving and devoted family, as every child deserves that.
