Two years ago on Easter Sunday, Seth Meyers and his wife Alexi welcomed their first child into the world, a son named Ashe Olson. When the Late Night host returned to his desk a few days later, he recalled the harrowing birth story which involved his wife screaming at an Uber driver through the streets of New York City and making it to the hospital with just 20 minutes to spare.
After that, you’d think the second delivery could only get easier, but as Meyers recalled on Monday night, “Well, move over, that story, because that’s so normal compared to what happened yesterday.”
This time, the couple was seemingly better prepared with Meyers’ mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and doula on hand to help, until contractions went from being about 20 minutes apart to oh my god we need to get to the hospital right now. While his sister-in-law stayed behind to watch their other son, the other four took the elevator down to the building lobby as an Uber waited outside.
But as they made their way out to the front steps, Alexi realized she couldn’t get into the car, even as her husband and doula tried to convince her otherwise. “My wife is saying, the baby is coming, the baby is out,” he recalled. “At which point [the doula] looked at me and said, ‘The baby is out.'”
“And I looked at my wife,” he continued. “And the only way I can describe how my wife looked was she looked like someone was hiding a baby in a pair of sweatpants.”
At that point, it sounds as if all hell broke loose as Alexi proceeded to have the baby on the lobby floor, while the NYPD, fire department, and EMTs flooded the building. They eventually made it to the hospital, where their newborn son, named Axel Strahl, was given a clean bill of health.
Meyers went on to emotionally thank everyone who helped them out that day, from the emergency responders at the scene, to neighbors who warmed blankets to swaddle their son with, and of course his wife for having the bravery to calmly weather the situation. He also revealed that Axel’s middle name comes from his mother-in-law’s maiden name, whose parents were Holocaust survivors who met at a hospital in Austria a day after being liberated.
“Days like this, you really, you know when someone is born you have such an appreciation for everyone in your lineage who lived so that you could have this moment,” Meyers said tearfully. “And so we’re just so happy to give him this name for people who obviously had to work so hard to do that.”