A young father delivered his daughter on the front seat of a truck that was speeding down the icy highway between Cañoncito and Santa Fe in a snowstorm early Tuesday morning.

The 19-inch-long, 6-pound, 11-ounce baby girl named Joanna Mallory LeFevre and her parents, Russell and Elizabeth LeFevre, were all in good condition Tuesday at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center. They are scheduled to go home to Cañoncito on Wednesday.

Elizabeth LeFevre said Tuesday was her due date, and she started having contractions around midnight. By 2 a.m. her pains had intensified, she said, so she and her husband and 3-year-old daughter Renee LeFevre loaded into a truck driven by Russell's brother, Neil LeFevre, and headed for the hospital.

"It was blizzarding outside," Russell LeFevre said. "They had shut down I-25 between Eldorado and Las Vegas."

"We got like two miles down the highway, and I told him there was probably no chance we were going to make it to the hospital," Elizabeth LeFevre said. "As soon as I said that my water broke."

Russell LeFevre said that when he checked his wife after her water broke, the baby was already halfway out. The other half of the baby came out in minutes as the truck was speeding down Old Las Vegas Highway.

"I turned her to the side and gave her a little back slap, and she coughed up some goop and I wrapped her up in a jacket," he said.

Russell LeFevre is employed as a nurse's assistant at Christus St. Vincent and had just graduated from nursing school Dec. 8. So he had some training.

"They teach you how to birth a baby, but you've got a suction bulb and blankets and clamps and everything you need [during the lesson]," he said.

"In the moment I was totally unprepared to deliver a baby in my truck. I had shoelaces instead of clamps, and I was wiping out her mouth with my finger instead of a suction bulb. It was pretty wild."

Russell LeFevre said his wife delivered the placenta a few minutes after the baby, and he wrapped that in another jacket.

During the birth, Russell LeFevre's brother was on the phone with an emergency dispatch operator, who had been talking the family through the birth. The operator advised them to tie off the baby's umbilical cord with a shoelace, which they did.

After the baby was born, the family headed for Hondo Fire Station 2 near Eldorado, but no one answered when they banged on the door. Next they approached a state police officer parked on Interstate 25, who gave them blankets and called an ambulance — from the Hondo fire station — to take them to the hospital.

Russell LeFevre said his older daughter, Renee (who was also born after a very short labor), was "so good" during the whole ordeal and tried to comfort his wife through her labor pains by patting her on the head and telling her, "It's going to be OK."

"It was amazing," Russell LeFevre said. "It was awesome. We got her into the ambulance and the paramedic said we did a great job. The baby was healthy and pink and crying. She was a little cold. But she was born in the middle of a blizzard."

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.