Woman gives birth 7 hours after finishing marathon

By Rita Rubin

Amber Miller sounds almost apologetic when she says yes, she did have an epidural when she delivered daughter June at 10:29 p.m. Sunday. She just didn’t think she had the strength to go without an epidural. Not surprising, considering she had completed the Bank of America Chicago Marathon seven hours earlier.

Really, that last sentence should have a row of exclamation points after it.

In a phone interview from her hospital room, Miller says she wasn’t sure until the last minute whether she was going to run the marathon, her eighth. Not because she didn’t think she could do it, but because it fell eight days before her due date.

“I kind of was thinking it was likely I was going to have her before the race,” says Miller, 27, a stay-at-home mom who lives in the Chicago suburb of Westchester, Ill. After all, son Caleb, now 19 months, was born 18 days before his due date.

But “the night before, I’m still pregnant, I’m still feeling good. I figured I paid for it.”

So what the heck, she thought, not planning on actually completing the whole 26.2 miles. “I thought it’s likely that the last few miles I’m going to get really, really tired.”

On her doctor’s advice, she conserved her energy by alternating between running and walking every two miles. “Pregnancy-wise, I felt fine. The baby was still moving. I was drinking a lot, eating a lot.”

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