An Ohio couple had no idea if their baby was a boy or a girl until the moment when they delivered her in a minivan along a local interstate.
“We got our girl, so I’m happy,” said mother Regina, who didn’t want her last name disclosed.
While Regina was in labor and on the way to the hospital, the couple from Russia in Shelby County was forced to pull over on the exit ramp on the interstate exit ramp at Vandalia. Baby Hannah Marie was safely delivered around 8 a.m. Thursday with the help of the father, Steven.
Regina said their baby was born within five minutes of pulling over.
“The baby’s being born right now,” Steven said while on the phone with county emergency dispatchers. “The baby is out. The baby is out.”
The baby can be heard crying on the 911 call.
“Regina did all the work, and a guardian angel helped me deliver it,” Steven said.
Don Collins of the Montgomery County Regional Dispatch Center, who was on the phone, helped guide Steven through the successful delivery.
“You have to come in a little bit prepared every day,” Collins said. “You never know what you’re going to get.”
Collins used a computer program to guide Steven through the process. It’s a program the dispatch center has been using about three years.
“It walks us through a set of instructions to provide care for the child, and mother as well,” Collins said.
This wasn’t Collins’ first time helping to deliver a baby over the phone. He said the other time was a baby delivered inside a vehicle in a bank parking lot.
Vandalia Fire Chief Chad Follick said by the time emergency crews arrived, everybody was doing fine.
“I think it was like 16 degrees when we pulled up on the incident this morning, so that’s a critical situation,” Follick said.
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