‘This baby’s been through more than she knows.’ : Only 4 Days Old, but It’s Been a Tough Life

Life has not been easy for 4-day-old Tanya Spiegel.

On Tuesday, as she was riding home from a Long Beach hospital with her parents 45 hours after her birth, a heavy, 51-inch metal bar--debris from the Garden Grove Freeway--smashed through the windshield, showered glass over everyone and landed across the baby in her infant car seat.

It was not her first car accident. Five months earlier, when Tanya’s mother, Karen Spiegel, was four months pregnant, she was hit by a driver who had run a stop sign. The accident sent Spiegel into contractions and left her with back problems.

“This baby has been through more than she knows,” the new mother said.

But on Wednesday, Tanya was sleeping, nursing and thriving at her home in Corona. And Karen, 27, and Bob Spiegel, 30, say they have seat belts and an infant car seat to thank for their firstborn’s health.

Might Have Been Killed

If Tanya had not been nestled in her car seat, strapped into the car’s back seat, she probably would have been injured, possibly killed, her parents say. If she had been in her mother’s arms, the infant would have taken the full force of the exploding windshield, and the metal bar could have injured her seriously, they said. As it was, the metal bar came to a rest on top of the infant seat, apparently not hitting Tanya, who slept through the incident.

“Ten years ago, when you brought home a baby, you held it in your arms. Now they tell you to put them in a car seat. Thank God I did,” Karen Spiegel said.

Five months ago, if Karen Spiegel had not been wearing a seat belt, she would have been thrown against the steering wheel harder and might have hit the windshield, she said. She and her husband have no doubts that she also would have lost the baby.

‘Had My Cruise Control Set’

“I am sold on them,” Karen Spiegel said, referring to seat belts and infant car seats. “This baby has had an unusual history.”

Tuesday’s accident occurred about 2:05 p.m. as the Spiegels were eastbound in the middle lane of the freeway near Brookhurst Street in Garden Grove, traveling 55 m.p.h. “I had my cruise control set,” Bob Spiegel said. “We’re parents now, and we definitely wanted to play it safe.”

A small pickup truck in the fast lane passed them on the left and switched lanes in front of them, Bob Spiegel said. In the process, the truck ran over a metal bar on the road, and it became airborne. It hit the car’s hood and then the windshield, shattering it, and Bob Spiegel thought it had bounced off the car and back into the road.

The new parents’ first thoughts were for the baby, and they turned around and found to their horror that the metal bar had “shot straight through the windshield like an arrow,” Bob Spiegel said. It had landed with one end resting on the infant seat’s armrest and the other on the ledge behind the back seat.

Slivers of glass covered Tanya’s face, and her parents feared the baby’s eyes were injured, Karen Spiegel said. She and her husband, too, were coated with pieces of glass. Bob Spiegel quickly left the freeway, and the minutes spent waiting for the California Highway Patrol and paramedics to arrive were long and torturous, the new mother said.

“I wasn’t going to pick her up because my clothes, my face, my hair were covered with glass,” she said, and she feared she would further endanger the newborn by touching her, she said. “That was the hardest part, to sit and look at her and not touch her.”

Glass Fragments Removed

The baby and mother were taken to Medical Center of Garden Grove, where the emergency room physician removed the glass fragments but said he feared there could be scratches to Tanya’s corneas from undetected splinters in her eyes, the parents said. So--driven by Karen Spiegel’s parents, Lionel and Harriet Gillerman--the family returned to Memorial Medical Center of Long Beach, Tanya’s birthplace and the employer of Harriet Gillerman, an obstetrics and gynecology nurse.

There, an ophthalmologist found no splinters and no evidence of scratched corneas but requested a follow-up check in three weeks. A neonatologist found no internal injuries. The ride home was uneventful.

“Thank God,” Karen Spiegel said.

The infant car seat was the Spiegels’ second. They had returned the first in favor of a sturdier model that was approved by the CHP and the Federal Aviation Administration for airplane travel, Bob Spiegel said.

Karen Spiegel had talked about breast feeding the baby on the way home from the hospital, but her husband had insisted that they could stop and take the baby out of the car seat for feeding, which they did before the accident, Bob Spiegel said.

Earlier Brush With Danger

The new father is chief executive officer of Corona Industrial Electric Inc., the Spiegel family business. He is the son of former Corona mayor Flora Spiegel and prominent businessman Herb Spiegel.

Actually, it was Tanya’s third brush with danger. At the end of their Grecian honeymoon nine months ago, when Tanya was conceived, the Spiegels were in the Athens airport, haggling over their return flight, when the TWA hijacking occurred last summer. For a while, their families here mistakenly thought the Spiegels were on the plane that had been taken over by terrorists, Karen Spiegel said.

“She’s had quite a life,” the new mother said of her daughter. “If this is any indication, God’s going to be with her a long time.”