News

“I wasn’t due until January 17,” Cheauma said. “My friends were telling me to run up and down the steps and things like that.”

Whatever Cheauma did, it worked. After more than two hours of contractions, she gave birth to Tomas John Cheauma, a healthy 7-pound, 2-ounce boy with a full head of black hair, at 4:58 p.m. Wednesday.

“I think it was all of those pot pies I craved,” Cheauma said.

Cheauma started feeling labor pains Tuesday night and was taken to a hospital in Fort Yates from her home in Mobridge, S.D. A little after midnight, she had her aunt take her three daughters to her mom’s house and was put in an ambulance headed to St. Alexius.

By 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, doctors broke her water to get a better view of the baby, who was showing signs of distress.

“It was an easy birth with little pain,” Cheauma said. “Usually they say when the water is not naturally broken the labor is more painful.”

Cheauma had experience on her side. Tomas John joins three sisters — Brianna, 4, Angelika, 2, and Sidny, 10 months.

“They can’t wait for him to come home,” Cheauma said. “They all wanted to come with me and see him be born.”

Cheauma made the trip to Bismarck and went through the birth alone. Tomas John’s father, Brian Derockbriane, couldn’t make the trip from Mobridge because of a family emergency.

“Nobody knows that I had him except his dad,” Cheauma said. “I talked to him this morning and he told me to go in and do my best and he would be up here as soon as he could.”

For Cheauma, the first baby of the new is year is the last for her.

“This is the last baby for me,” she said. “They are so precious when they are first born, but once they get old enough and are running around, they are a handful.”

(Reach reporter Sheena Dooley at 701-250-8225 or [email protected].)

By SHEENA DOOLEY, Bismarck Tribune