By Cassandra Kimberly
The Commercial Appeal
Copyright 2008 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Shenell Williams’ baby was coming and she wasn’t anywhere near a hospital.
There were no doctors. No pain relievers. Not even a hospital bed when Williams gave birth Monday morning to daughter Saige. All she had was the help of two paramedics and four “pale” firefighters.
“I had no IV, no drugs — they finally gave me oxygen,” she said on Thursday. “I wanted to go natural anyway — but not that natural.”
Williams started having contractions early Monday around 2 a.m.
It wasn’t like the week before on Super Bowl Sunday when Williams went to Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women. Doctors said even though she was having contractions, she wasn’t dilating and sent her home. She and her husband, Roland Williams, made it back in time to catch the game.
“I was in so much pain I told them, ‘I’ll have her at home before I come back here,’ ” she said. “I didn’t think I would actually have her at home.”
On Monday, the contractions came with a vengeance.
“I grabbed my husband. I started crying, and I said, ‘We’ve gotta go, we’ve gotta go.”
Paramedics with Rural/Metro and firefighters with the Arlington Fire Department arrived at the Williams’ Arlington home at 3 a.m. None of the responders were worried at first, said paramedic Adrienne Strickland, who delivered Saige.
“I was getting my equipment, when the lieutenant came running back out (of the house), and his eyes were as big as cereal bowls,” she said.
Twelve minutes later, Saige was born. It was Williams’ third baby, but it was Strickland’s first delivery.
“It was surreal,” Strickland said. “I was trying to reach into my brain to remember all of the things I learned in school. It’s not like starting an IV.”
Hubby Roland took care of their two sons — Roshan, 7, and Roland, 9 — during the delivery.
Unexpected deliveries at home are not that common, said Chief Dennis Rutledge with Arlington Fire Department.
“During my 10 years in Collierville, I haven’t seen that many,” said Rutledge, former chief of the Collierville department. “In those 10 years, we had maybe four.”
In 2005, the most recent year available, there were 81,720 births in Tennessee according to the Tennessee Department of Health. Of those, 75 were listed as “unintentional home births.”
Williams said she was concerned about living in Arlington so far away from a hospital early on in the pregnancy, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“It was scary, but I can honestly say it was the best experience of my life,” she said.