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Article: Baby boy arrives special delivery
Baby Brody arrives via 'special delivery'
Clay and Becky Halbert of North Port planned to have a midwife deliver their son at a Sarasota medical center. Things did not go according to plan.
"I'm going down the interstate right now and my wife is way far into labor and I don't think I can make it where I need to go," Clay Halbert told a 911 dispatcher. "We waited too long."
The 29-year-old technician at a medical supply company pulled the car over near mile marker 191 on the night of Aug. 8.
An ambulance started moving to their location, but would not get there for more than 10 minutes. The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office dispatcher, Diane Steinberg, pulled up a computer program that prompted her on how to deliver babies.
"What should I do?" asked Clay Halbert, with Becky, a 30-year-old guidance counselor and volleyball coach at North Port High School, screaming in the background. It was their first pregnancy. It was Steinberg's first delivery in her two years as a dispatcher, too.
"I'm going to tell you OK, you're doing fine. You've got to calm down to help her, OK?" Steinberg said.
Clay Halbert did not calm down. Becky's water had broken as he dialed 911.
"Oh my God, the head is coming out," Clay Halbert said. "I can't see because she's standing up. She can't sit down, there's nowhere to sit in this car."
Steinberg told him to get her to the back seat, into a position where he could help her. The Halberts got out of the car.
"The car is locked!" Clay Halbert said.
"The car is locked?"
"No, hold on, hold on. Come back here, Becky."
Becky Halbert, screaming, got in the back hatch after her husband threw the cargo in the car onto the grass shoulder.
"Tell me what's going on," Steinberg said. "Can you see the head?"
"I don't really know where I'm supposed to be looking at," Clay Halbert said. "I see the head. I can see something, I don't know what it is. I don't have any light."
Steinberg told him to apply gentle pressure so the baby did not come out too fast."It's coming, uh, I don't know what to do here, ma'am," Clay Halbert said.
"Listen to me, they're coming, OK?" Steinberg said. "I know it seems like it's taking forever but they're coming as fast as they possibly can. Is the baby completely out?"
"No, it's not even close. It's barely even close to out," Clay Halbert said.
The ambulance arrived about 15 seconds later.
"It's coming out. Hey," Clay Halbert yelled at the medics. "It's coming out right here, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do."
Emergency medical technician Shawn Houser knew what to do, although it was the first time he delivered a baby outside of a hospital. Something else was wrong -- the baby was coming out backwards, not head first.
"He just reached in and grabbed the head," Clay Halbert said. "The baby wasn't breathing. Then you hear a little cough, and he didn't cry at all. The first time he cried was when he was in the hospital."
Everyone involved -- including the baby, Brody Matthew Halbert -- is healthy and OK, something that Becky Halbert called "pretty amazing."
"No one believes us," Becky Halbert said, including two of their best friends, with whom they always joke around.
"They called us back at the hospital number because they didn't believe it actually happened."
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