Aug. 25, 2011: Clara City, Minn., man helps with unexpected home delivery of his son, daughter
A nervous, father-to-be is hardly an expectant mother’s first choice for help when a baby decides to make an early arrival. However, Selena Owen could not have found any better helper than John-Adam-Day. Clara City Police Chief Ralph Bradley was called to the couple’s home sometime after 3 a.m. last Thursday, a little after Owen’s daughter, Lana, had entered the world. Twin brother, Orion, appeared to be on his way.
- Real homebodies
A nervous, father-to-be is hardly an expectant mother’s first choice for help when a baby decides to make an early arrival. However, Selena Owen could not have found any better helper than John-Adam-Day. Clara City Police Chief Ralph Bradley was called to the couple’s home sometime after 3 a.m. last Thursday, a little after Owen’s daughter, Lana, had entered the world. Twin brother, Orion, appeared to be on his way.
It was bittersweet and scary moment for the couple: Selena Owen’s 4-year-old son, Henry James Owen-Dobmeier, died Aug. 2 at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis.
Nearly two weeks later, Adam-Day said he was hoping Selena — 36½ weeks pregnant at that point, with a C-section scheduled in September — could get some much overdue sleep.
“I just wasn’t sleeping very well so I went out and sat on the couch. I guess my water broke,’’ Owen said, recalling the events of the night.
She woke up Adam-Day and her sister, Misty Blumer and jumped in the shower as her adult helpers gathered the necessities for the hospital trip.
“I was running around like a mad chicken with my head cut off,” John-Adam-Day recalled “… getting bags in the vehicles and everything else like that.’’
But Lana wasn’t waiting.
“I barely got out of the shower and over to the bed before she came,’’ Selena said.
She laid on the bed, and the nervous father saw the baby was crowning.
“Once I saw the crown my training kicked in, and I did what I was taught,’’ he said.
A few years earlier, John-Adam-Day had undertaken Emergency Medical Technician training, to include child delivery. He was also on hand for the births of his two other children.
“Honey, you need to push one more time for me,’’ he remembers announcing.
Lana arrived with her umbilical cord around her neck and under her arm. Her father calmly rolled her twice, “like a yo-yo,’’ safely unraveling the cord. He used his pinky finger to scoop out her mouth, patted her back and rubbed her with a towel. He grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped the umbilical cord six inches from Lana’s belly, per the instructions of the dispatcher on the phone.
Selena offered the next advice: The new boot laces she had purchased for him were still in their package on the bed’s headboard. He used one to tie off the cord.
This is roughly the time Bradley, a father of 13, who delivered two of his own children, arrived on scene.
He called for support but the Clara City Ambulance crew was on a patient transport.
The Granite Falls Ambulance squad was then dispatched, but was 20 minutes away.
Thankfully, Orion obligingly waited, allowing paramedic Laura Oftedahl and EMTs Susie Johnson, Jen Jaeger and David VanKlompenburg to prepare for his arrival.
The ambulance crew will be receiving “stork pins’’ to signify their role in assisting the birth, according to Gene Hughes, director of the Granite Falls Ambulance Squad. The father ought to receive one as well, he said.
John-Adam-Day and Selena Owen have something far better: two healthy children. Lana weighed 5 pounds, 10 ounces and was 18 inches long. Her brother weighed at 6 pounds, 11 ounces and was 20 inches.
Mom and the twins returned home Saturday. Dad is already back to work at S & D Repair, the Raymond business he owns.
Tags: news, local, family, fccnetwork
RSS Feeds