Serving Vincent and Harpersville
A Product of The Daily Home
The Hometown Marketplace
Harpersville crew delivers twins
By Jim Smothers
Marketplace Editor
“Rescue
302 to the station, we are now transporting three patients to UAB.”
With that, the crew on the Harpersville Fire Department’s ambulance let their co-workers know that they had just
delivered twins in the ambulance, while transporting a woman in labor from the Westover area.
Paramedic Kyle
Roy had just gotten his license the week before, but felt his experience and intensive training were just what he needed.
“It felt a little odd being in charge,” he said. “Instead of looking for instruction and guidance,
now the guys were looking to me.”
With
two other EMT’s, driver Matt Roberts and assistant Ryan Carter-who is nearing completion of his paramedic certification-Roy
left the station Wednesday morning on a 7 a.m. call to Westover for a woman in labor. Harpersville Fire Chief Wade Holley
told him to get ready, because it looked like he might be delivering a baby that day.
Holley
said that deliver a baby isn’t all that unusual.
“I delivered two babies myself my first year on the
job here,” Holley said. “We’re so far out, and sometimes people wait too long to go.”
Roy said Holley told him to let him know if they delivered the babies before they got to the hospital.
“I
said ‘Trust me, I’ll let you know!’”
The ambulance met the woman and other
family members at a gas station off of US 280 in the Westover area in response to a Mutual Aid call from the Westover Volunteer
Fire Department, just a few minutes after 7 a.m.
Roy and Carter had done what they could
to prepare the ambulance for possible delivery, and the three of them got her on the cot and on the way as quickly as they
could, and soon they were in the midst of rush-hour traffic headed toward Birmingham.
It was
8 a.m. by the time they reached I-459.
They made radio contact with UAB Hospital to let them know
they were on the way, and Roy attempted to give them updates on the patient’s condition and contractions.
Contractions had been two minutes apart to begin with, and by that time Roy saw that the first of the twins would not
wait any longer.
“Pull over to the side of the road,” he told Roberts.
“NOW!”
Roberts pulled over to the side of the road next to the Summit, and walked around to the back of the
ambulance to offer another pair of hands to help.
When he opened the door, he was handed
a healthy baby girl. Roy and Carter had cut and clamped the cord and suctioned the nose and mouth, and then returned to the
mother, leaving it to Roberts to finish cleaning off the newborn. The second twin was breech birth, a potentially risky situation.
Roy said he was concerned about it, but the birth went very smoothly.
Part of Roy’s
training included a minimum of 500 hours internship at UAB included rotations among different departments. This allowed him
to become better acquainted with medical procedures and treatment to prepare him to help patients in a wide variety of medical
emergency situations. He also got to know many of the staff members at the hospital.
“The
ones in Labor and Delivery seemed to be a little bit jealous,” Roy said. “Most of them had never had a breech
delivery. In the hospital, they normally do a C-section on those.”
The twins’
father met them at the hospital.
“He came and shook my hand and said he appreciated
it,” Roy said.
“They were both good size for twins, about six pounds and the last we
heard they were all doing well.
“This was one of those things you go through in class
and think ‘I don’t want to deliver babies’. But now I think I could do it every day. It’s kind of
nasty, but it’s a beautiful thing.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
