On September 17, 1984, 37-year-old cooking instructor Diane Avoli was in the middle of teaching her students how to make stuffed cabbage when she went into labor.
She gave birth to a baby girl — her seventh daughter — just a few minutes later.
After the birth, the cooking students helped Diane and her husband choose a name. Here’s how Diane explained it:
They were saying that we should name her after something we were cooking, and someone jokingly suggested cabbage patch, but someone else said ‘pearl’ after a kind of barley we were cooking, so we picked that for a middle name.
The baby was named Kristen Pearl Avoli.
(According to Diane’s website, she has eight children. Her eighth is a boy.)
Sources:
- “Class Gets Real Childbirth Lesson.” Tuscaloosa News 20 Sept. 1984: 3.
- “Good thing the cooks could boil water.” Wilmington Morning Star 24 Sept. 1984: 2C.