FRANCESTOWN — Hunter Hardwick got his first real taste of New England living a little earlier than most.

In Saturday’s wee hours, just minutes after his mother, Sara, went into heavy labor, Hunter entered the world in the front passenger seat of a Toyota pickup in below-zero temperatures.

His father, Benjamin Hardwick, 24, of Francestown, is listed on his birth certificate as the attending physician.

“We weren’t four minutes down the road and she said, ‘Pull over and call 911!’” Ben said yesterday. “I ran around to her side of the truck, opened the door, and I saw his head.”

On the dash, a cell phone sat connected to a 911 operator who instructed the couple that they had plenty of time if her water had not yet broken, which it did shortly thereafter.

Although a crew cab, the truck’s back seat was filled with car seats usually occupied by Ben and his wife Sara’s other children. Sara barely had time to assume a comfortable position in the front seat when her son suddenly came out and into his father’s arms.

“When he started crying, we both started crying,” said Ben.

The 911 operator guided the parents through the process of clearing Hunter’s mouth and tying off his umbilical cord with a shoelace. Then baby Hunter got some help from one of his older siblings.

The oldest were at home with their aunt, who had zoomed over at about midnight when Hunter had begun making it clear he was on his way. But left behind in the truck was a blanket, a big fluffy blanket that Hunter’s sister had insisted they bring to a school event the night before.

“Apparently, that was a good idea,” said Ben, who took the blanket and promptly recreated womb-like conditions for his son. Mom, dad and baby left the hospital Monday after a surreal weekend, doctors having given Hunter and his family a clean bill of health.

“Yesterday it set in,” said Sara. “It was like, holy crap, I just birthed a baby in the front seat of the truck.”

Strangely enough, she had seen it coming. When she was five months pregnant with Hunter, she became briefly consumed by a seemingly irrational fear that she would not make it to the hospital for his birth.

“I was in a panic,” she said.

But the feeling passed and before either of them had time to remember her prediction Saturday morning, it was all over. Based on the records of 911 calls on Ben’s cell phone, Hunter Daniel Hardwick, 7 pounds 10 ounces, 18.5 inches, was born between 1:15 and 1:25 Saturday morning.

The first emergency medical technician to arrive at the scene, 5 or 10 minutes after Hunter was born, said she had never seen anything like it in decades of emergency response work, Ben said.

Ben spent most of the day Sunday cleaning the front seat of the truck, which he said did not fare well. He and Sara kind of like being close to the site of their son’s birth, though, he said.

“We had been thinking about trading in the truck,” said Ben, “But now we’re going to keep it.”