LEWISTON – Joseph Elijah Le Blanc is pink and healthy and he weighs 5 pounds. You would never guess the baby boy was born in a car going 60 mph.

It happened about 1 a.m. Tuesday. After a day spent in what looked like false labor, 37-year-old Brenda Le Blanc was at her Lisbon Falls home thinking she would have to wait a little longer.

Then the pains came in earnest. They were closer together and more intense. On one of the coldest nights of the year and with roads slicked with ice, Brenda and her husband, Dan, had to make the long drive to the hospital.

“I managed to get one leg in my robe and then I had another contraction. I had to pause,” Brenda said. “I got another leg in and had to pause. We made it to the living room and I had to pause again.”

Finally, the couple and their 13-year-old daughter were in the car and on the way to the hospital. But Joseph Elijah was not going to wait.

“I was telling my husband to hurry up,” Brenda said. “After 10 minutes I told him, we’re not going to make it.”

She was right. As the Dodge Neon swept into Lewiston on Route 196, the baby was on his way into the world.

“I’d be surprised if there was anyone in Lewiston who didn’t hear me screaming,” she said.

And as they passed Burger King on Lisbon Street, Joseph Elijah arrived. Then his mother’s maternal instincts took over.

“I picked him up. My husband says I turned him over and cleaned his face and mouth,” Brenda said from her hospital bed. “I don’t remember doing that. I also wrapped my hand in a blanket and paddled his little bottom until he cried.”

The Le Blancs’ daughter Sarah was leaning in from the back seat, comforting her mother and looking at her new, little brother. Dan Le Blanc’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He estimated he was driving 60 mph most of the way to the hospital.

“The roads were glare ice. It was extremely cold outside and cold inside the car,” he said. “That part wasn’t a lot of fun. It’s like something you see on TV. You just have to block everything out and get it done.”

Dan Le Blanc got it done. Several minutes after they had left their home, they pulled up to Central Maine Medical Center with the newborn baby still attached to the umbilical cord. Paramedics rushed over from a nearby ambulance. Sarah explained what was happening and the medics got to work.

“I told them you can’t take the baby yet, he’s still attached,” Brenda said. “They decided to cut the cord while we were still in the car.”

From there, it was smooth sailing. Brenda spent a couple days in the hospital and both mother and son were doing well. On Thursday, they were released from the hospital and they were settling in at home. In a few years, Brenda Le Blanc figures Joseph Elijah will be old enough to understand the dramatics of how he came into the world.

“It was quiet an experience,” she said. “He’ll have quite a good story to tell.”