MDA medic walks man through wife’s birth en route to hospital

Now I finally hear for myself the baby crying and I also hear the MDA ambulance siren, both at the same time. You almost can’t tell which is which. But both sounds are a relief for everyone.

By ADI LUGASI
Adi Lugasi (photo credit: Courtesy)
Adi Lugasi
(photo credit: Courtesy)
I am a relatively new worker for Magen David Adom – a dispatcher – and before that I was a medic in the Army.
One day, I get a call; a man who says his wife is pregnant and she is giving birth in the car. Right then and there. I tell him to pull over to the side of the road – immediately – but as safely as he can. I can see on MDA’s vast control system exactly where they are – in a car on Rt. 4 – but I ask him, anyway. “On Highway 4, going north,” he says. “The head is coming out,” he exclaims.
They are obviously on their way to Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital. It is right near me and my dispatch center, also in Ashdod, and while I am talking to him I have also sent for paramedics in an ambulance to meet them.
He goes to his wife and the second he does, he says the head is out; I tell him to get towels and to heat the car. This is very important.
It was all very stressful. I had never done this before. Up till now, I had mostly done [only] car accidents, heart attacks, strokes, and various injuries. This was the first time I had dealt with a patient who was close to giving birth.
The husband says he has a towel. I ask him not to move; I try to ask direct questions. Now, I ask the husband to support the baby’s head.  Don’t force it, I say.
Once the baby is out – after it’s out on top of its mother’s stomach – I ask about the color of the baby.  “Is it blue? Choking? Crying? Breathing?,” I ask. “Is its chest moving?”
I tell him the ambulance and paramedics should be there in seconds. My training has given me a lot to fall back on. You can’t know. You have to ask a lot of questions. And to know exactly what to ask. To really help. I was very excited. It was the first time I did [something like this] through the phone.
The husband says the baby is moving and that he cried when he came out. But I ask again about the baby’s color. The husband makes a lot of jokes. I think he is trying to calm everyone down.
“He has the skin color of an Ashkenazi,” he says.  Of course I was not asking if the baby – whose mother is also Ahkenazi – came out dark-skinned, I needed to know if it is blue from not breathing enough oxygen.

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Now I finally hear for myself the baby crying and I also hear the MDA ambulance siren, both at the same time.  You almost can’t tell which is which. But both sounds are a relief for everyone.
Then suddenly the husband shouts, “יש לי בן! יש לי בן!” (“I have a son! I have a son!”)
I have not yet met the baby but I hope to at the brit milah.  I met the father by video during a television interview of the two of us. 
First he said on TV maybe they will give the baby my name – which was very nice but it’s a boy. So he said actually they have a name.  He said because the baby was born in a car they will call him Fiat Doblo 2018.
Of his wife, he said, “My wife is currently cleaning the car. She is amazing. She is awesome and it is not obvious what she did.”
I think to myself, “The Fiat Doblo name is very funny. That your wife is currently cleaning the car is not so funny.”
The writer is a medic with Magen David Adom and a dispatcher in its Ashdod Dispatch Center.


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