Eric Church fans welcome littlest choir member

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This article was published 12/10/2021 (1633 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Carly Sjödin, who was near her due date, wasn’t going to let pregnancy get in the way of seeing one of her favourite musicians.

So, she and husband Orrin decided to go to the Eric Church concert in Winnipeg Oct. 2, but their unborn son had different plans.

Carly, 30, and Orrin, 31, welcomed their first child, Erik, on Oct. 3, hours after Carly’s water broke at the country star’s concert.

The couple, who live near Teulon, have long been fans of the musician.

“When we heard he was coming back this year, after COVID and everything, we were like: ‘We got to go,’ then we saw the date and it was 20 days before our due date,” Carly told the Free Press.

“We figured, ‘Oh, we’ll be fine, we can make it, I’ll be nine months pregnant but I’ll be fine.’ We didn’t even think twice about getting tickets.”

The couple made their way to the arena and stopped at the merchandise booth around 7:30 p.m.

“I felt a sharp pain or a pop, and thought that’s a weird feeling but didn’t think much of it. We bought our shirts and continued on,” Carly said.

As they made their way to seats in the sixth row, Carly felt felt her water break.

“I didn’t think my water would break, because it was so early,” she said. “(Getting into the concert) was a long wait and being pregnant, you have to use the bathroom a lot.”

“We went and found our seats and she went to the bathroom. We sat for quite a while, we thought maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,” Orrin said.

After 45 minutes, her contractions were consistent.

“We didn’t want to go. We had really good seats and we’ve been waiting for this concert for quite some time,” Carly said.

“The seats were amazing,” Orrin said.

By 8:30 p.m., just before the concert kicked off, they figured it was time to get to St. Boniface Hospital.

“Before it gets too wild, we should get her out of here,” Orrin said.

A security guard helped clear the crowd so they could make their way out of the arena and to their truck, where Carly had a suitcase packed for the hospital.

In triage, medical staff said they might send the couple home.

“She looked at me like: ‘Want to go back to the concert?'” Orrin said.

Instead, they stayed put. After a long labour, their son and concert memento was born the next afternoon.

Although they missed the show, one of Church’s songs, Springsteen, was used to coax the babe into the world. They danced to it in the hospital room to try to speed up the birth.

When he finally did appear, the couple knew what to do next.

“We were on the fence on what to name him. Erik was actually on the table beforehand, and some of it had to do with Eric Church even before the concert, but we were back and forth,” Orrin said.

“This has to be a sign, his name is ‘Erik’,” Carly said.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca