Seth Meyer and his wife Alexi Ashe welcome their second son in an unexpected place last Sunday; the lobby of their apartment building. The Late Night host announced the news to viewers the following night, explaining how he’d had a feeling his wife would need to go to the hospital that day but was still shocked when his mother-in-law told him, “We have to go to the hospital now!”
As the family waited for their Uber on the steps outside their building, Alexi told her husband she wasn’t going to make it. She laid down in the lobby and the rest, as they say, was history.
“She looked like someone who was hiding a baby in a pair of sweatpants. It was like someone was trying to sneak a baby on the plane.”
Meyers recalled his conversation with the 911 operator: “Over the course of a minute conversation, I basically said, ‘We’re about to have a baby, we’re having a baby, we had a baby.’” He added, “I went from someone calling in about an emergency to sharing good news with a stranger.”
The Late Night host explained how the fire department arrived to cut the umbilical cord and give his wife oxygen, remembering how the couple had barely made it to the hospital (“20 minutes to spare”) with their firstborn. “That story is so normal compared to what happened,” joked Meyers.
The couple named the newborn Axel Strahl. His middle name is a nod to Ashe’s grandparents, who were holocaust survivors. Meyers gave a shoutout to the fire and police departments as well as his wife, “who obviously has to get an apartment closer to the hospital.”