Kathryn Wheeler of the Willamette Valley Communications Center in Salem, Ore.

“He’ll come out on his own. Don’t push or pull the baby,” calmly advised calltaker Kathryn Wheeler during a 9-1-1 call. Since November 2009, Wheeler has been a calltaking trainee for the Willamette Valley Communications Center in Salem, Ore., which provides services for 18 police, fire and EMS agencies in Marion and Polk counties. On April 20, she had what she can only describe as an “unusual day” at work.

At 09:01 hrs, Wheeler answered a call from Salem resident Ryan Morris. His wife, Lisa, was in labor on the bathroom floor, and he was sure they wouldn’t make it to the hospital in time for the baby to be born. The call lasted seven minutes. Morris began by calmly stating that his wife was in labor. “She’s on schedule; she’s fine,” he said. “It’s time to have the baby.”

EMS was immediately dispatched, but one minute into the call, Morris stated, “OK, the head is out.” He then quickly passed the phone to his mother-in-law, Sue Curths, who passed Wheeler’s instructions on to Morris while he delivered the baby.

“The incident is a great example of how a situation can go from calm to full speed in a moment,” says Wheeler. “I’ve found, in my limited experience, that the calmer I stay, the calmer the callers are. And when a caller is really in distress, asking their name and enlisting their help can get them to focus and take charge of the situation on the other end of the line.”

The birth was not without complications. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, but Wheeler walked Curths and Morris through the process of untangling the cord, clearing the baby’s airway and getting the baby wrapped and onto mom’s chest. She was able to confirm that the baby was breathing before EMS arrived on scene. Wheeler says, “Toward the end, I think Grandma was distracted and might have felt that, ‘OK, [EMS] is here now,’ and that she might want to hang up, but she was good and waited until they got [into the room].

“For me, [the incident] was also a wonderful example of how we can touch the lives of our callers in far-reaching ways,” she says. “I was interested in becoming a 9-1-1 telecommunicator because it gives me the opportunity to help people while still being challenged on a daily basis.”

For Wheeler the incident was also about her training. “It was pretty textbook,” she says. “I followed my training, and it worked out well. It was definitely reassuring to have my trainer, Christi Wolfe, next to me throughout the call to help work through the situation as it unfolded.

“For me, being officially in the middle of training without having soloed yet, I didn’t realize it was such a big deal,” she says. “Everyone else was so encouraging. It made me feel like I was competent. It will probably be one of the most rewarding points in my career. It was a great call to be part of. I think, especially in the training process, which is designed to be hard to make sure you can do the job, it makes all this nicer to have such a great call.”

The baby, Andrew James Morris, was born 7 lbs., 14.5 oz. and 21 inches long. Mom and baby Andrew were transported to a local hospital and are doing fine.

Getting Personal
The Baby Morris call was preceded by a call most 9-1-1 telecommunicators dread: a personal emergency. Wheeler answered a call from a medical alarm company about a patient, her father, who had fallen. Although her father was fine, the call reminded Wheeler of an earlier call she had handled that morning about a father dying.

“It was unnerving at first,” she says. “I knew he had the alarm, so when the company called, as soon as they started with the street number, I was like ‘Uh-oh.’ But he had just fallen, which is not unusual, and I knew someone was with him. So it wasn’t terrifying, but it’s one of those things that happen at some time in your career. I turned to my trainer and said, ‘This is my dad.’ She was more surprised than I was. But it was fine. It was kind of a relief to have a call like that [so early on] and know you can handle it and get through it.

“The baby call came on the heels of that medical alarm call, making this one of the most challenging mornings I’ve had so far,” she says, “but rewarding in that I handled it all as I have been trained to do and came out feeling more confident in my abilities.”

Wheeler recently had the chance to meet the Morris family. When a telecommunicator has a successful emergency child birth, they are presented with a pin called the Stork Award through the Oregon APCO/NENA Chapter. The award was presented to Wheeler in a conjunction with a police award ceremony. “They invited the entire [Morris] family, and I was able to meet the baby,” she says. “When I met [Sue Curths], she said I hung up too fast and that she wanted to thank me. They have such a good story, and I was lucky to be a part of it.”

The April 20 incident has drawn a lot of local media attention, which has made Wheeler a bit nervous as a newbie in the profession. She says, “I was a little nervous getting so much attention, knowing that everyone here would’ve done at least as well, if not much better, with a call like this. However, everyone around me has been incredibly supportive and very positive.

“I would like to thank everyone else, who has been doing this for a long time—the calls that don’t get any attention—and are handling it so flawlessly and competently every day,” says Wheeler. “I’m really appreciative of them.”

About the Author
Natasha Yetman is associate editor for APCO’sPublic Safety Communicationsmagazine. Contact her via e-mail at yetmann@apcointl.org