NZ police officer delivers baby on the roadside

January 28, 2010 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: News

A NZ police officer came to the aid of a pregnant woman on the way to the hospital, delivering her baby on the roadside.

Constable Tanya Davarle of Te Kopuru, Northland, NZ had learned a lot while attending Royal New Zealand Police College, but she wasn’t taught anything about delivering babies. She was soon going to learn.

On December 19, Davarle was working a routine traffic stop when a man ran up to her and said, “I think my wife is having a baby.”

Sean Stewart had been transporting his pregnant wife Helen to the Auckland Hospital, but Helen’s contractions quickened along the way. Sean saw the officer and stopped, asking for her assistance.

Davarle rushed back to Stewart’s car to find Helen contracting rapidly in the back seat of the car.

“After assessing the situation we knew there was no way we would make it and so we called the ambulance,” Davarle told New Zealand Web site Stuff. “But the baby was coming quicker than the ambulance.”

Rushed for time, quick-thinking Davarle, 29, took matters into her own hands.

“I said: ‘Hi, I’m Tanya. Right, let’s get you in a comfortable position and if you’re ready, push.’ And then I just went down to the business end of things. I didn’t have time to think about anything or freak out. I just had to do it.”

Helen, from Titirangi, gave birth to 7 pound Olivia Stewart a few minutes before the ambulance arrived. Her husband Sean cut the umbilical cord and Helen and Olivia were taken off to Birthcare.

“I’d been in and out of labor all day and then the contractions started coming quite intensely and then all of a sudden it was full-on,” Helen told Stuff. “It happened very quickly. My water broke at 5:20 p.m. and she was born at 5:37p.m.”

Davarle was reunited with the baby and the couple this week, having the chance to talk about the encounter.

“It’s amazing,” Davarle said. “To actually deliver a baby and to say that you’re the first person to touch a little human being is absolutely amazing.”

“It’s good to be there for the birth because in our role, police have to deal with quite a lot of death, so to help give birth was a real highlight,” she added.