Young children call 911, help their mother deliver baby

March 19, 2010 by Shawn Douglas
Filed under: News

Two young children called 911 for advice on how to help their mother deliver her baby after she quickly went into labor at home.

Faith and Jabari Sanders were expecting a new sibling to join the family soon, but they didn’t expect on March 9 that they would be the ones bringing their new brother Joseph into the world.

Their mother, Alana Sanders, began having labor pains around 1:30 a.m., shortly after their father, Geoffrey, had left for work.

“She thought it was a bowel movement,” Geoffrey Sanders later told the San Francisco Chronicle. “She sat down and nothing was happening as far as that was concerned.”

Alana Sanders, 36, realized that she was going into labor. Past experience had proven that she was quick to give birth, and it soon became clear that she was going to deliver her baby at home.

She told her son Jabari, 9, to call 911 while her daughter Faith, 11, helped deliver the baby. During the 911 call, the dispatcher walked the two children through the process while paramedics were en route.

“The baby’s coming now,” Jabari told the dispatcher during the call, now released by the Alameda County Regional Communications Center.

In one push, Alana Sanders gave birth to 9 pound, 4 ounce baby Joseph while still in the bathroom. Despite the situation, Faith and Jabari remained calm as the dispatcher asked questions concerning the mother’s and baby’s condition. When told that the umbilical cord had snapped, the dispatcher advised them to tie it off with a shoelace or piece of string.

Paramedics arrived five minutes after the call began and took mother and baby to St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, California where they were both given a clean bill of health.

Geoffrey Sanders, 35, said he was proud of his children. “As a husband, you always want to be Superman in your family,” he told the Chronicle. “I wasn’t able to do that. But my kids were the superheroes this time around, and that’s fine with me.”

The 911 call can be heard on the NPR Web site.