CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A local pizza shop could have the secret sauce to induce labor in pregnant women.
A handful of Charlotte women say they went into labor after eating at Hawthorne’s New York Pizza & Bar in Elizabeth.
The owner says he’s been hearing rumors for years and didn’t think much about it until a few weeks ago when the mommy bloggers started talking, and he realized there might be something to this.
Henley Schmiedel doesn’t mind a little crying here and there. After all, she’s just glad Madeline is here.
“I just wasn’t as comfortable with her and at the end I was ready to be done with it,” Schmiedel said.
So a week before her due date, when friends told her about Hawthorne’s, she was all for it.
“I didn’t think anything was going to happen, I didn’t think anything of it,” she explained.
Except four hours later, she was in labor.
“I ate the pizza and she came early,” Schmiedel said.
She was the third among her friends to eat the pizza and gave birth within 24 hours. And since her friend posted it on Facebook a few weeks ago, five more women have come forward.
Hawthorne’s owner John Adams thinks it may have to do with their proximity to the hospital. That, or it could just be the homemade sauce.
“Definitely think it’s the sauce,” Adams said. “The spiciness and content of the sauce. It’s spicy, but not too spicy, probably just enough to induce a baby.”
Pregnant women are now calling from as far away as Texas to get a slice.
“We had someone for lunch today that came two hours from South Carolina,” Adams said.
Needless to say, he’s eating up the attention.
“Hawthorne’s is about families and if we can help create and grow a family by inducing someone that’s pregnant, then we’re all about it, we love it.”