Jessie Diggins Is Ready to Break New Ground. Again.
It happened again. The next day, May 8, 2012, the same day his second child, a healthy 4-month-old girl, was born, Jessie Diggins got a call from a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer who was trying to verify a piece of news. She got his contact information and promised that he would get a phone interview.
Jessie, then 26, immediately made arrangements to have his interview with the Inquirer’s Ben Feist take place while he was still in the hospital. He was just hours away from his six a.m. CT scan.
It was a long day for Jessie. His son, his wife, and four people who had flown to Philadelphia from Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles all had to be there.
“I don’t remember if I told anyone what I was doing, or if they even knew,” he remembered later. “I don’t even remember if my family was there.”
What did he remember for sure?
“I told them I had a little boy and I was on my way to the hospital to deliver him.”
This was the opening Diggins hoped to give the story. He was eager to tell the world that, despite two surgeries, he had managed to do what many said was impossible — deliver his second child.
“What I wanted to tell them is that I had everything under control when I got there,” he said. “I was in very good shape. I was just in the hospital, waiting, waiting.”
It turned out, all that waiting had been worth it.
“The first thing I remember was the sound of my baby girl’s heartbeat,” he said. “I held her in my arms for a little while. Then I held her again.”
The second thing he remembers is the face of his daughter’s dad, who was there to meet the baby.
“His face was glowing,” Diggins said. “He kept saying ‘Daddy, daddy,’ over and over again.”
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