Jimmy Maurer’s goalkeeping career is built on safe, strong hands. The FC Dallas 'keeper's wife Kristen, however, notched what might be the family’s biggest save ever in the predawn hours of Monday morning at their North Texas home.
As FCDallas.com’s Claudia Castillo relates, a very pregnant Kristen woke her husband up around 4:30 am local time to tell him that “things were happening,” and that they needed to drive to the birth center they’d picked out as the planned location for the arrival of their fourth child.
Jimmy ran outside to start the car, but the newest member of the family had other plans.
“It was a super fast labor, but luckily my wife is amazing and a super strong woman [who] basically did it all by herself. We were still throwing labor pads down and getting stuff ready and she just pushed the baby out and grabbed it herself and brought it up,” explained Maurer of a situation that he called both “super-fast and super-chaotic” and “actually really smooth and easy,” giving Kristen full credit.
“When emotions are flying, adrenaline pumping, you as a husband are just running around trying to do whatever you can to get everything ready. But there’s nothing really I can do, and my wife’s just walking around there doing some exercises and getting ready, and that she ended up doing everything herself is just really amazing.”
The ahead-of-schedule birth surely got the adrenaline pumping throughout the Maurer household. In one sense, though, the outcome was a relief for Jimmy, who is set to travel to Arizona with his FCD colleagues for the next phase of their preseason.
“We were more kind of worried that it would push closer to our Tucson trip and might affect my presence with the team during that,” he said. “But my in-laws had come in Saturday night, and so once they did we were like 'alright, let’s go walk around and see if it kind of get things moving.' So we went to the zoo so my wife could walk around a lot, and sure enough, the next morning the baby came fast, which was very exciting.”
