People who do live shows on TV and radio are really out there on a limb. Anything can and does happen. But for a country radio DJ named Ania Hammar, that was taken to an extreme. About a month ago, on August 5, Hammar showed up at work for her hosting duties on The Highway on SiriusXM, per Taste Of Country.
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"She tells Taste of Country that it started out as a pretty regular day — even though, at 34 weeks pregnant in August in Tennessee, she was dragging a little." Still, she was bravely hanging in there. "I was slowing down, I was exhausted, but, you know, still powering through."
Hammar's Water Broke, Alarming Her
She recalls that she was on the telephone when something happened. "All of a sudden I felt that gush." Her water broke! Hammar's chair was soggy. It must have been alaming to her because her due date was still a month and a half away.
First thing she did was promptly end her phone call with a listener. Then Hammar's professionalism kicked in despite the frightening situation. "I have that recording...and I would actually like to give myself a pat on the back for how calm I was on the phone. You would never guess that I was in a complete spiral about my water potentially having just broken."
She Wasn't Ready for the Baby Yet
Hammar felt unprepared. Per the outlet. "Hammar and her husband Kyle still had plenty to do to get ready for their baby boy. She hadn't taken the courses she wanted. She hadn't red all the baby books and taken all the lactation classes."
But nature doesn't always follow the calendar and the clock. We are sometimes at its mercy.
Hammar Swung Into Action
This is some woman! She manage to contact a substitute to fill in for her, and "she drove herself to the hospital...." If she messed up at all, it was only because she entered by the wrong entrance. "I went to the regular emergency room and they were like, 'Oh, we don't do that here.' They were just kind of looking at me wide-eyed, like, 'Okay, yeah, she needs to be in a different department.'"
She Gave Birth to a Son Named Leo
The baby came pretty early, so he had to remain in the NICU for a couple weeks. Hammar stayed in the hospital to deal with some blood pressure problems. All that was kind of unsettling for Hammar, understandably.
Per the outlet, she said, "As a first-time mom, you imagine having your baby on your chest, and you imagine starting to breastfeed from day one. You never imagine seeing your baby for the first time in the NICU attached to all of these machines."
Everything Worked Out
She added, "One of the silver linings was I could take care of myself so much more than maybe I would have been able to if he had been on my chest from day one," she notes. "I would never wish this on anybody, but my outlook on life is to try and find those silver linings and stay grateful."
The new mom has had plenty of support. "I've definitely had these moments of pure gratitude for the village I have around me," she says. "The whole 'It takes a village' thing is something that I have understood more in these past few weeks than I ever did before."
