Although his wife would probably beg to differ, Fred Savage says that sometimes a 30-hour labor is a good thing!  Out of town on business and unable to catch a flight home, Fred recently recalled that had it not been for Jennifer Savage’s protracted delivery of Oliver Philip, 16-months, he would have most likely missed the big event.  He shared Oliver’s birth story as part of the ‘Every Baby Has a Story’ campaign by the March of Dimes. 

The story of when he was born, I was working in Park City, Utah, and my wife was down here in Los Angeles.  I had my pager and my cell phone and everything ready to go to get the word when he was about to come.  And so I got the call and I got a plane ticket and rushed to the airport to come back down to LA and my wife called me from the hospital and they told her that it was false labor, that she should go home, that she’s not going to have the baby that night.  So she called me at the airport, it was the very last flight out of Park City that night, and she said, ‘The baby’s not coming tonight.’

So I go home, and of course on the way back to my house I get a call from my wife saying ‘It’s real! It’s real! Come home!’ so I had to watch the clock and wait for the first flight to come.  It was a dreadful night, between calling Southwest Airlines and trying to charter a plane…I made it finally back to LA about 8 the next morning, and I was there in plenty of time because he didn’t come until about 11 that night.  So I always thank my wife for her 30-hour labor because if it weren’t for that I wouldn’t be able to see him come into the world.

Fred and Jennifer have been married since 2004; Oliver is their first child.