A love story. An engineer. And a baby born in a Nashville garage. How they're connected.
The car sped nearly 100 mph on the interstate.
It may have hit 90 on Charlotte Avenue in Nashville.
It was 4:55 a.m. Oct. 22. The Sunday morning serenity was suddenly pierced when Jena Thomas, the expectant mother in the passenger seat, began screaming "LORD HELP ME." Over and over again. "LORD HELP ME."
"I knew it was serious by the urgency in her voice," said Josh Thomas, the expectant father. By urgency, he meant near window-shattering decibel levels.
Josh turned "white as a ghost," Jena Thomas said.
For about 12 minutes, Josh and Jena Thomas prayed for the traffic lights to stay green as they raced toward the rear entrance of Ascension St. Thomas Hospital (Midtown).
They needed to get to the third level of the parking garage, which was very familiar to Jena because the garage had been designed by her father, structural engineer Tony Locke, and they had been parking there for doctor visits since she was a little girl. They needed to get (somehow) Jena out of the car and through hospital doors. They needed to get to the birthing center.
But their baby, a boy they would name Jackson, was determined he wasn't going to let all of those things happen.
It could be argued, even before he was born, Jackson was already a teenager.
Annoyed to friends to dating to marriage
Jena Thomas, 35, plans stuff.
Attention to detail — that's her. Meticulousness — check. Explaining the plan to Josh — yep.
That's what the Thomases do.
Josh is, how would you say ... a chaotic mess.
When they worked together in the same public relations office years ago, Jena would, because that's what Jena does, clean Josh's desk without his permission.
Josh, 42, comes from a family of preachers, but his calling was politics. He worked for Fred Thompson and Lamar Alexander in public relations/public affairs.
"It's an industry where you can have an impact," he said.
Jena thought about trying to be a children's book author, but that never materialized. She studied public relations at Belmont University.
They met when they were both working at Hall Strategies. Jena planned the Southern Festival of Books, while Josh worked on governmental affairs.
There weren't sparks at first, unless you count anger. Josh didn't appreciate his desk being unburdened of clutter.
"He got mad at me," Jena said. "We both annoyed each other."
They became friends, Josh took a job in North Carolina and he started seeing a woman there. Josh and Jena stayed in touch via text.
He would come back into town and meet up with his old Hall Strategies friends, and Jena was one of those.
Then he would come to visit and only see Jena. She remembers thinking, "Why didn't he kiss me?"
The woman in North Carolina didn't work out. In 2014, Josh was in Nashville for a visit when Jena made the following statement:
"Sometimes, I think we should just date," she said.
"I've thought that for years," Josh said.
"He was playing the long game," Jena said with a laugh.
Their first date was at the Patterson House, an upscale Nashville bar.
They were married Nov. 12, 2016, at the Belmont University Chapel. Their first child, Elyse, was born in November 2020.
Here's the thing about that birth. Jena was in labor 29 hours. Jena's first reaction to that ordeal was emphatic. "Elyse is not going to have a sibling," she said.
The guy who built that
This story would be incomplete if there wasn't an appearance by Tony Locke, Jena's dad.
He's the kind of guy, who, if you drive around Nashville with him, he's pointing to all the stuff he designed or worked on.
"I've worked on a lot of big houses over the years," he said, including one he built for Country music star Martina McBride.
There's the Titans practice field. That's Tony Locke. There's the Music City Center. Tony Locke. There's Bridgestone Arena. Locke worked on that one, too.
He designed the pressroom for The Tennessean building when it was on Broadway.
He designed the old Lifeway Building ("With the cross," he said.) Then he was part of the company that tore it down.
"You can't drive through a neighborhood without him saying, 'I did that house,'" Josh said.
Between 1989 and 1992, Locke was the lead engineer for the Midstate Parking Garage, which was attached to Baptist Hospital (now Ascension St. Thomas).
He said he designed the parking structure with fewer columns, greater accessibility. He can talk for an hour about "means of egress" and "queuing effects."
He said the Midstate parking garage is a B-grade structure because it offers fewer parking spaces and more space for people getting in and out of their cars.
"People coming in and out are in a hurry," he said. "I'm pretty glad it was done that way. I did that a long, long time ago."
Prophetic.
Which leads us to the third floor of that parking structure.
False alarms mess up plans
This time, Jena's plan was solid.
She wasn't going to spend 29 hours of labor in the hospital.
The Thomases hired a doula, who was going to help her through. Make it all easy. Labor at home. With a massage.
She would wait until she was dilated (6 centimeters) before she checked into the hospital.
Then, she would go to the state-of-the-art birthing center, where she would be in a proper bed in a wide open room with nice music lilting through the speakers.
But all that planning went out the window.
She was due Oct. 13. Nope.
She had Braxton Hicks contractions (false labor) for weeks. Every night she went to bed she would think, "This could be the night."
Then it wasn't.
On Oct. 21, Jena and Josh had a nice dinner. They watched the Netflix heist drama "Lupin." They put Elyse to bed. Then the contractions started.
So the plan started.
Jena's parents came over. The doula came over. Josh drove Jena slowly, nicely to the hospital with the doula following calmly behind.
They were ready to check in and have the baby at 11 p.m.
But babies don't always do planning.
The Thomases were home before midnight.
Another false alarm.
Rolling thunder
At 4 a.m. on Oct. 22, Jena thought it was time.
Again.
Parents and doula were called. They came to the Thomas house near Shelby Park.
Josh loaded Jena into the car and began a slow ride (trying to avoid bumps) to the hospital.
They were on Interstate 65 when Jena had a horrible contraction. It was so bad, Josh pulled to the shoulder and stopped.
Her water broke.
That's when she started screaming. It was 4:55 a.m.
And the race was on.
Jena remembers the song that was playing in the car — "A Million Little Miracles," by Elevation Worship and Maverick City.
Panic mode. 100 mph. Trying to time the traffic lights on Charlotte. Into the parking structure. Third floor.
They parked in their same spot where they had been hours earlier.
Josh tells her, "All you have to do is walk into the hospital."
She says, "I can't."
The baby's head is crowning.
Josh runs in, yelling to a security guard and a nurse.
"THERE'S A BABY BEING BORN IN OUR CAR."
Suddenly, nurses were climbing all over Jena.
Josh said it looked like a clown car. He said it looked like there were 30 people wearing scrubs inside their car.
Josh stayed back and watched them carry Jena out of the car and put her on a gurney.
They started rolling toward the hospital entrance.
And there he was.
Jackson Louis Thomas.
Eight pounds, 13 ounces.
Born rolling.
Someone yelled out the time.
5:08 a.m.
The gurney stopped. Nurses wrapped mother and child in blankets, and Jena pulled Jackson to her chest.
The nurses said he should have been named "Carson," or "Flash" or "Vin Diesel" (because of the "Fast and Furious" car-racing movies).
But they stuck with Jackson Louis. Louis is her father's middle name.
Her father who designed the place where his grandson was born.
"We're people of faith," Josh said. "I think God was looking out for our little family that night."
Jena remembers, after the drama was over, she looked at Josh and made a quick comment about the future possibility of having another child.
"We're done."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Emergency birth: Baby born in Nashville garage designed by grandfather
