BENTONVILLE - Travis Hanson left the hospital Sunday with a Father's Day gift he'll never forget - a lesson in childbirth.
Travis first took his pregnant wife, Renea Hanson, to a hospital in Fayetteville on Friday. Renea was having regular contractions and just knew the couple's third child, a little girl, was on the way.
But the doctor told Renea it was a false alarm and sent her with two sleeping pills back to the couple's Bentonville home. "Sleep it off,"the doctor told her. "She wakes me up at 4 a.m. screaming that there's blood everywhere,"27-year-old Travis said of the moment he knew the doctor had been wrong.
Not sure what to do, Travis asked Renea. She yelled for him to call 911 and then his mother. "I called 911, and they kept telling me I'm going to deliver the baby, and I'm telling them, no, I'm not,"Travis said on Sunday.
Travis' mother, Rebecca Biderman, was visiting from the Republic of Panama. She had coached Renea through the births of the couple's two oldest children, Elijah, 6, and Malachi, 2.
Biderman made it from her hotel room in time to help her son, who was on the phone getting childbirth instructions from Bentonville paramedics. They told him to move his wife from the bathroom to the living room. "I picked her up and carried her into the living room and threw her on the floor,"Travis said, still animated on Sunday. "All she can say is, 'Where's your mother and the paramedics,' like I'm not there."
Biderman said it wasn't long before the baby's head was crowning. "It was really quick,"she said. "It was chaotic."
Moments before baby Kristin was born - much to Travis' relief - paramedics rushed in to take over. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck, but other than that, the birth was fine.
On Sunday, the family rested in a dark room at Northwest Medical Center.
Renea said she doesn't remember much of the birth, probably because of the sleeping pills.
Travis, on the other hand, said he'll never forget it. But as scary as the home birth was, Travis knows it likely won't be the most difficult situation he'll face as a father. "I'm scared because she's a girl, and I don't know anything about them,"he said with baby Kristin in his arms. "I think I'm going to have to buy a shotgun (to protect her with), because she's my first."
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