Back in early November, Claire Lutz was out among Vasquez Rocks with her husband and some friends, 24 weeks pregnant, when her water broke. She was 2,500-plus miles from home. The 36-year-old Philadelphia woman had come to California with her husband on business.
During the trip, a friend of theirs from Glendale suggested a recreational visit to Vasquez Rocks in Agua Dulce. Their friend, an avid hiker, thought the park would be a beautiful place to check out, it being a popular film and television shooting location for its unique rock formations. Never thinking she’d have to deliver her baby until months later when she was at home, which was only 20 minutes from where she planned to go to give birth to her child, the unthinkable became inevitable.
“I’d stayed in the parking lot, and my husband and our friends went to actually look at the rocks — because I didn’t really want to do anything that was too strenuous,” Lutz told The Signal during a recent phone call from her home in Philadelphia. “We didn’t have any reason to be concerned at that point. And you know, what we heard from the doctors was that there’s no way we could have known that this particular complication would have happened.
” Lutz’s water broke right there in the parking lot of her very rocky surroundings. Luckily her husband and friends were nearby to quickly respond. Lutz said that one of their friends jumped on a map app on his phone and searched for the nearest hospital.
Henry Mayo Newh.
