She guesses she traveled about 10,000 miles in those nine months.

So perhaps her daughter Rosalee entered the world where she felt most comfortable — in a car.

“She’s a traveling baby,” Karina said from the hospital Saturday, a day after delivering her daughter on Fulton Street in her mother’s red 1997 Pontiac Gran Prix.

Karina and her mother and stepfather, Ramona and Leon Trexler, had gone to the hospital at 10:30 p.m. Thursday, only to be sent home.

“I knew I was in labor,” says Karina, 27.

But not dilated.

So they returned to the Trexlers’ home near China Grove, and Karina tried to sleep.

“I was in the bed from about 4 to 5:20 (a.m.), then I was struck with intense pain,” she says. “It was pretty unbearable.”

She woke her mom right before her water broke.

“Everything was just crazy. Mom was yelling at Leon to start the car and get some towels, and I’ve got this death-grip on her hand,” Karina says.

As her mom helped her down the stairs, Karina had an urge to push.

“I said, ‘Don’t push! Pant, pant like a dog,’” Ramona says.

They jumped in the car with Leon driving, Ramona in back and Karina in front with the seat reclined.

“I was trying to breathe through all the urges to push,” Karina says.

They made it to the corner of Fulton Street and Mitchell Avenue when the baby crowned. Karina, who has studied midwifery and had hoped to deliver Rosalee at a birthing center, ordered Leon to pull over.

“I was giving directions,” she says. “I told him to call 911.”

But Leon didn’t know how to operate Ramona’s cell phone. So Ramona took the phone and reached an emergency dispatcher.

“I was shouting, ‘Get an ambulance here, this baby is coming,’” Karina says.

Karina asked Leon if he would come and help.

“He said, ‘I don’t think so,’” Ramona says.

But he had no choice. With Ramona on the phone and Karina giving birth in the car, it was up to the certified public accountant to bring Rosalee into the world.

“Her shoulders turned, he reached over and grabbed her and she came out,” Karina says. “Leon caught the baby. I couldn’t have done it without him.”

Earlier at the hospital, Leon had confided to Ramona that he thought he might pass out in the delivery room.

“And he was the one who ended up delivering her,” Ramona says. “He was a champ.”

Standing there with the baby, “he looked at me like, ‘Now what do I do?’” Karina says.

“I said give her to me and get in the car. Let’s go to the hospital before the ambulance gets here—I can’t afford the bill,” she laughs.

But a firetruck pulled up, followed by the ambulance.

Karina patted the baby twice on the back. She let out a cry—a glorious sound to the nervous trio.

“We were scared to death,” Ramona says. “I was terrified.”

When firefighters reached the car, “everyone was hysterical with laughter and happiness,” Karina says.

Neighbors came out to offer congratulations and coffee. A man on the sidewalk who had witnessed the whole event announced, “It is 6:32 (a.m.). She was born at 6:32,” Ramona said.

Rosalee Sapphire, nicknamed “Ruby” because a red sapphire is a ruby, earned a perfect 10 on her APGAR health tests, administered by the ambulance driver. She weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces.

“I felt a lot of anxiety, wanting to make sure that this baby was going to be OK,” says Karina, whose first child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. “The fact that she came out perfect and scored 10 — God really graced us.”

Karina cut the umbilical cord in the ambulance and nursed Rosalee immediately.

“They let me hold the baby the whole time,” she says. “That was really nice.”

Ramona and Leon drove to the hospital and called family members from the parking garage.

“It was so wonderful, but it was so scary,” Ramona said.

The day before, Ramona had asked Karina what to do if the baby was born suddenly at home.

“She told us exactly what we would need to do, so we had kind of rehearsed this a little bit,” Ramona says.

At the hospital, the nurses and doctor who had sent them home earlier apologized, Ramona says.

Car births aren’t for everyone, Karina jokes.

“I wouldn’t do it on the road again, but I would do it at home,” she says.

Her plans to relax with Rosalee at her mother’s house and the home of her father, Mike Jones, who lives at High Rock Lake.

And they all want a copy of the 911 tape.

As for Karina’s stepfather, he’s not considering a different line of work despite his new nickname, “Dr. Leon.”