Tahnee Buss went into labor on the drive to the hospital in Norfolk, and by the time her husband Kiel pulled their vehicle over near a truck dealership outside town, there was no time left to wait for paramedics. He called 911, climbed into the passenger side to help his wife, and delivered their daughter himself on the shoulder of Highway 275 with a dispatcher’s voice guiding him through every step.
The couple, who live east of West Point, were headed to Faith Regional in Norfolk when Tahnee’s contractions started, according to the Wayne Herald. The contractions were roughly eight to 12 minutes apart when they left, but by the time they passed through West Point they had tightened to about two to three minutes apart, per the same report. Tahnee’s water broke about three miles from the east side of Norfolk, and Kiel called the hospital, where a staff member advised him to turn on his blinkers and drive at a comfortable, faster speed.
It wasn’t fast enough. As Norfolk Daily News reports, Kiel pulled over near the Cornhusker International truck dealership, called 911 and moved to the passenger side of the vehicle to help his wife as her contractions came just two to three minutes apart. Dispatch sent an ambulance while guiding Kiel through what came next.
A Dispatcher's Voice on the Line
According to KTIV, the couple realized about 10 minutes from the hospital that the baby’s head was already out, prompting the call that connected them to Norfolk dispatcher Alayna Ping. With Ping guiding him over the phone, Kiel delivered his newborn child himself. The station reports this was the second baby Ping has talked a caller through delivering over the phone.
Milliebelle Buss was born at 1:20 a.m. on Sept. 18 in the family’s Ford Expedition, the station’s report states. She is the couple’s fifth child together and the 10th child overall, and the family lives about 40 minutes from the Norfolk hospital they had been racing to reach. Accounts of how quickly help arrived differ: KTIV reported an ambulance met the family about 10 minutes after the birth, while Norfolk Daily News put the emergency crew’s arrival at about five minutes afterward.
Milliebelle was reported healthy, and the outlet’s account says she and her parents were doing well and back home afterward. Kiel and Tahnee returned home that weekend, according to the Wayne Herald.
A Mile Marker Instead of a Hospital
The roadside delivery will likely follow Milliebelle onto paperwork most newborns never see. Kiel Buss said their daughter won’t have a hospital listed as her birthplace — she’ll have a mile marker, he told Norfolk Daily News. It’s a detail that places the family in company with at least one other Nebraska parent: Jasmine Gutschow, whose son Raiden was born in an ambulance after her car broke down on Highway 10 near Upland while she was traveling to a hospital in Kearney, according to Flatwater Free Press reporting. Mile Marker 32 on Highway 10 in Kearney County is listed as Raiden Gregory’s place of birth on his birth certificate, the outlet reported.
Roadside births like these are not isolated quirks of bad timing in rural Nebraska. Fifty-six of the state’s counties have no birthing units at all, according to Flatwater Free Press, leaving families to travel to one of just 48 birthing hospitals statewide. The outlet also found that Nebraska has lost six birthing units in rural hospitals since 2017, several of them already at least 35 miles from the nearest hospital.
The gap in care shows up in outcomes, too. Flatwater Free Press reported that rural Nebraska recorded roughly 52 severe maternal mortality cases per 10,000 deliveries between 2016 and 2018, compared with an urban rate of 45. Between 2017 and 2021, the state lost 56 family medicine physicians, and by 2021, 14 rural counties had neither a family medicine physician nor an obstetrician, per the same report. Sixteen Nebraska counties average fewer than 50 births a year, the outlet noted — a reality that makes the drive to a delivery room, rather than the delivery itself, one of the biggest risks rural families face.
