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Home › Stories › First Baby › Complicated Birth > 911 Birth

911 Birth

By Denise Rigney

My story is about the birth of my second child. I met my second husband in November of 1996. I got pregnant about two months later. It was a normal pregnancy. I felt great and went to all my doctor's appointments. I was due the first week of October of 1997. I had many ultrasounds that were all normal. At about the third one, they told me it was going to be a boy.

I worked at my job till the day before I had my son. Then I can't even imagine what happened next. It was the night of August 21. I did not sleep well that night. I was up and down all night. Then around 5 in the morning I got up and thought that I had to go to the bathroom. I had cramping in my stomach like a pain you would have if you were constipated. So I tried to go to the bathroom, but I could not go. So I went and lay down.

Then around 6 a.m., the phone rang. It was my mother calling to get me up for work. I was to work 8 a.m.-5 p.m. that day. I told her on the phone that I did not feel well and did not know if I was coming in to work on not. She told me to get up and get moving around and maybe that would help. So I got up still cramping. I went back to the bathroom and sat on the toilet for about a half an hour. My husband got up at 7 a.m. and I was not in bed. He came looking for me. I was in the bathroom. I got up, stood in the hallway, squatted down, and screamed in pain. My husband than asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital or should he call 911? I told him to call 911.

The call came to 911 at 9:10 a.m. on August 22, 1997. They had me lay down. They asked my husband to check me to see if he could see anything. He checked me and told them all he saw was some blood and water, and before he could finish saying water, the baby's head came out. He was screaming to the operator that the head came out. She guided him through the rest of the delivery. The baby was not breathing when he came out. They told my husband to stick his finger in the baby's mouth the clear away anything that might be in there. He did and then the baby started crying. I was screaming to my husband, Don't let the baby die.

The ambulance finally got there and they loaded me and the baby into the ambulance. While they were putting me on the stretcher, my husband called my mom at work. She answered the phone and he told her that he had just delivered our son. She said, Okay, have a nice day, and then hung up. She called back a second later and said, You did what? He told her again. He also told her to tell them at work that I would not be in.

So then I went to the hospital. They worked on me because I was hemorrhaging. They got me taken care of and then they had to call in a specialist for my son. They transported him to a different hospital that had a neonatal ward. He was in the hospital for three weeks. He was in an incubator for a while and was hooked up to all kinds of machines. He was being fed through a tube. Everyday we went to the hospital and everyday they said, Maybe tomorrow you can take him home.

One day while at home, the phone rang. It was my doctor's office and they said that I had an infection in my placenta. That was what happened. I was at the doctor's two days before I gave birth to my son and I told him that I was leaking something. He said that it was just urine and that the baby was lying on my bladder.

Today my son is an active 4-year-old with a speech problem. He goes to school. He has speech therapy. He is getting better. About four months after our 911 call, we went to meet the operator who handled the call. It was very emotional. She gave us a tape of the 911 call.

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