By Joan Gralla
Newsday
After keeping everyone waiting for a week, the baby suddenly was in a rush.
The healthy boy arrived five minutes after his parents called 911 from home to report his mother was having continuous contractions, officials said on Tuesday.
The dispatcher, Stacey Scheiner, who has worked for the county’s Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services for more than 20 years, took the call at 9:22 a.m. and coached Mom and Dad through the birth, officials said.
A responder from Mastic Beach Ambulance arrived as the infant was delivered at 9:27 a.m., the department said in a statement. His health confirmed, the newborn was transported to Stony Brook University Hospital.
This is the third time Scheiner, a former volunteer EMT and certified nursing assistant at Stony Brook University Hospital, equipped with just a telephone, has helped parents through a successful home birth.
The baby was due about a week ago as his mother was in her 41st week, she said. Though it is not uncommon for a firstborn to arrive later than the 40th week benchmark, her parents’ inexperience might be one reason they waited too long before going to the hospital.
“It’s stressful because you want to do the right thing and make sure everything goes smoothly; it’s a newborn baby, and at the same time, you have two patients. We have to do everything perfectly,” said Scheiner, a mother herself.
Dispatchers must rely on whoever is on the telephone with them -- to both accurately relay what they are seeing and carry out any instructions. “They are your eyes,” Scheiner said.
Hearing the mother shouting in the background, she swiftly realized this labor was probably more advanced than the couple seemed to believe. And the young mother was in such distress that the only position she could tolerate was standing.
The father, Scheiner said, told her he couldn’t see any part of the infant.
“But I could hear the mom’s voice; she was yelling ... I kept urging him to have her lie down,” she said. “At first, she really didn’t want to ... I told him, ‘You have to have her lie down, you have to check to see if you see part of the baby.’ ”
Dispatchers, she said, have instructions for lots of possible complications, including breech births. Helpers are asked to gather clean cloths to swaddle the slippery newborn and they are instructed on how and where to place their hands. They also are asked to find something to tie off the umbilical cord, she said. A shoelace would do in a pinch.
This time, “It was just a matter of not even a minute when the father or mother said, ‘The baby’s coming out,’ ” Scheiner said.
Just as the infant began crowning, “the ambulance arrived on the scene,” Scheiner said. “I was just listening in to see if I could hear the baby cry,” she said, for her own peace of mind.
Though she missed out on that reassurance because someone hung up the phone, the birth was a true bright spot, she said, especially around the holidays, when tragedies can hit especially hard.
“Obviously, we get both ends of the spectrum,” she said. “It definitely is a nice outcome.”
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