The call came in to dispatch around 8:46 a.m. – a pregnant woman in active labor.
On that day in April, Paramedic Jackie Wilkes and EMT Dan Link didn’t expect anything unusual for their first call – a routine drive to Maine Medical Center where the mother would deliver.
But this baby had different ideas.
Wilkes and Link, with the help of an additional EMT, Chris Shepard, delivered the baby girl in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
“In most cases the mothers say they’re going to deliver. You get them there, and they don’t deliver,” said Ron Jones, Westbrook’s deputy chief of Emergency Medical Services. “This time she did.”
The person who called dispatchers said the impending mother was having frequent contractions. When Wilkes and Link arrived at the house, the mother was already walking out. The crew decided to call for a third EMT because it looked as though the baby might come en route.
It was the mother’s fourth birth, and babies usually come faster after multiple previous births, according to Wilkes. When they got her into the ambulance, her contractions were coming about two minutes apart, said Link, a sign the baby was coming soon.
Shepard drove the ambulance with lights flashing and siren blaring, and Link coached the mother on her breathing and attended to her medical needs – vital signs and IV – while Wilkes waited for the baby.
The mother received no drugs or epidural. “Dan was her epidural,” said Wilkes.
The mother was dilated, and the baby was coming down the birth canal. Then her water broke.
Shepard called ahead to the hospital to have a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit team ready for their arrival because the baby was going to be premature.
The baby’s head came out as ambulance passed King Middle School next to Maine Med. Wilkes and Link suctioned the baby nose and mouth and rotated her into the delivery position.
“Then the baby just shot” out, said Wilkes.
“Really,” said Link. “It was like the baby was shot out of a cannon.”
They stimulated the baby, and she started crying right away. They checked her for general health using what’s known to medical professionals as the “APGAR” scoring system – activity (muscle tone), pulse, grimace (reflex irritability), appearance (skin color), and respiration. All were fine.
Then they weighed her – only 1.98 pounds.
“But a very healthy 1.98 pounds,” said Wilkes.
They wrapped her up and clamped off the cord as Shepard was backing the ambulance into the bay at the hospital. Immediately the intensive care unit team jumped into the back of the ambulance and took over.
“We wanted to cut the cord,” said Wilkes, the intensive care team did it as soon as they got into the ambulance. “(But) we showed momma baby, and momma was very happy.”
The neonatal team whisked the baby girl off to the intensive care unit while Wilkes and Link looked after the mother and took her into the hospital.
“The entire time I’ve been an EMT (eight years), I’ve never had MMC come out and meet us like that,” said Link.
The team went to see the baby, which was doing very well, and they went to see the mother, who they said was very gracious. They said the mother had done a great job considering she didn’t have any medication to dull the pain and delivered her baby on the road.
“It was absolutely amazing,” said Link, who had taken part in only one other birth and that one in a lesser capacity, only taking pictures.
“It was a beautiful moment,” said Wilkes, who has worked 21 years as a paramedic and delivered 36 other babies, mostly in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. “It doesn’t matter what number it is.”
Jones said in 20 years working in Westbrook he’s only known of one or two other deliveries en route to the hospital. “Other than the fact that it was an unusual and exciting thing, the fact that everybody came out okay – no pun intended – is testimony to the expertise of the crew,” he said.
“In this field you see a lot of violence and death,” said Wilkes. “When you have moments like this, they’re very special. We thank the mother for having us.”
Jones surprised Wilkes and Link with a couple of pins in the shape of storks to wear on their uniforms. He also put a stork sticker on their ambulance to commemorate the event.
The baby was delivered on April 4, said Jones, and as far as he knows, mother and baby are doing fine.
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