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Canwest News Service
Newborn Nathan Boey is healthy and learning how to cry after his father and an RCMP officer who is a family friend untangled the complications of a rushed, unplanned home delivery.
The Maple Ridge baby arrived sooner than expected after his parents, Heather and Steve Boey, went to the hospital on the afternoon of Nov. 12 to plan an induced birth. They decided to go back home that evening after learning Heather wasn't quite ready. They thought they had time because their first child, Aurelia, had taken nearly a day to be born after the first contractions.
But that night, Nate turned the table on his parents. Heather, 27, began to go into labour in the bathtub and the baby was coming fast. "We didn't anticipate he could come so quickly," said Heather. "Steve asked me if I could make it to the car and I said 'No!' I didn't want to have this baby on the side of the highway."
For help, they turned to family friend and neighbour Steph Rogers, a constable with the Coquitlam RCMP who is also a mother of four.
"He was quite frantic on the phone and said, 'Get over here quickly!' I never heard Steve's voice like that so I knew I had to get there fast," said Rogers.
Steve, 36, said he called Rogers when he saw the baby was starting to crown.
Heather said she wanted Rogers there because she "knows how to deal with emergency situations." Meanwhile, Steve contacted the couple's midwife, who phoned paramedics from her home.
Neither Steve nor Rogers had delivered a baby before, so when complications arose, they just did what they thought was right.
"I knew from my previous births his head was turned the wrong way and her water wasn't broken so he was still wrapped in the amniotic sac," Rogers said.
Steve used his nail to scratch around Nate's mouth to free him of the sac, allowing him to breathe.
"It was just an instinctual thing. He saw it was there and he knew it had to be broken," Rogers said.
Then the two had to loosen the umbilical cord wrapped around Nate's neck. When the cord was freed, Rogers asked Heather to give one more big push.Two minutes past 11 p.m., Nate popped out, breathing but not crying, which worried Heather at first.
Steve and Rogers calmed her down, placing Nate on Heather's chest, and "seemingly within seconds" firefighters and paramedics showed up to attend to Nate, giving him oxygen, Rogers said. "He looked fantastic after that," she said.
Heather and Steve said on the weekend that Nate is healthy and learning how to cry.
gwood@vancouversun.com
