First baby of new year in Lawton just won’t wait

Never say that Loretta Mae Kenyon doesn’t know how to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

Her parents, Keegan and Lindsey Kenyon of Roosevelt, had expected an uneventful evening. Keegan was finishing up a 48-hour shift at the Altus Fire Department and Lindsey was corralling their two boys, 2 and 3 years old.

That all changed when Lindsey began having contractions at 9:45 p.m.

“She called and said ‘I’m going into labor,’” Keegan said, so it was off to Roosevelt to pick up Lindsey and make the one-hour drive to Lawton.

“I jumped up out of there and was jamming those gears into Roosevelt,” he said.

They had planned to come to Lawton separately, saving some time by not backtracking. But it was New Year’s Eve and Lindsey couldn’t find a ride.

The best-laid plans are often overturned by young ones, and Loretta Mae was not to be denied. At first, Lindsey said, she expected the contractions to subside and the couple wouldn’t have to make a midnight run to Lawton.

“They never stopped,” she said.

The couple arrived at Comanche Memorial Hospital just about the time the new year rolled around, and by 2:04 a.m. Loretta Mae was the county’s first baby of 2024. She weighed in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces and measure 19¼ inches long.

The Kenyons are no strangers to Memorial. Their two older children were born there and Lindsey was a registered nurse in the cardiac and vascular care unit almost six years before she became a full-time stay-at-home mom for her growing family.

The due date was Jan. 3, but it wasn’t necessarily a surprise she showed up early.

Both her brothers arrived two weeks early. Still, “I figured she wasn’t going to come until they induced her,” Keegan said.

The road to delivery wasn’t smooth. Lindsey was driving one night about 24 weeks into the pregnancy and her car struck a wild hog, a not uncommon event in rural Kiowa County. The incident caused a placental abruption, so Lindsey was prescribed modified and then complete bed rest before being cleared to be “back wrestling those boys.”

The Kenyons — who’ve been through seven pregnancies — plan for Loretta (she’ll probably be called Lettie Mae), to complete their family, which also raises cattle and horses on land outside town.

“She just wanted to make sure my last pregnancy was memorable,” Lindsey said.