Local firefighters helped deliver a baby girl in Gilmer Inn’s Room 101 in downtown Columbus on Tuesday.
The call came in about 6:15 a.m., according to Capt. Chip Kain with Columbus Fire & Rescue.
He and two other firefighters rushed to the inn to find a woman in her early-20s heading into labor. Kain began telling the woman, whose water had broken, an ambulance was on it’s way.
“We tried to calm her down, relax her,” Kain told The Dispatch this morning. “She said, ‘You don’t understand. It’s coming.’ Well, sure enough…”
The infant’s head and right arm had appeared. Kain, along with firefighters Eric Minga and Brent Younger, helped with the left shoulder. Other than that, Kain said, the woman did most of the work.
“Two pushes, she was done,” Kain said. “She did awesome.”
Immediately following the birth, after the firefighters had suctioned the child’s nose and mouth and wrapped it in a blanket, the woman — who was in town visiting relatives — became concerned about the newborn’s health. Kain said he reassured her everything was OK, pointing out that the child was crying the way babies are supposed to.
“Enjoy the moment,” Kain told her.
Not long later, an ambulance arrived and took the mother to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle, where she and the newborn were admitted. It was her third child.
Kain has been a Columbus firefighter for 16-plus years. He is a father of three. This, however, was the first time he had helped deliver a baby while on duty.
The whole thing, he said, took roughly 15 minutes.
Columbus Fire & Rescue spokesman Anthony Colom, regarding firefighters helping deliver children, said “it happens, but not very often.”
William Browning was managing editor for The Dispatch until June 2016.
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