Related article: Utah deputy stops speeders, helps deliver baby, PA cop helps deliver baby on highway road
By David Owens
The Hartford Courant
ROCKVILLE, Conn. — When Vernon police Sgt. Barry Foster and Officer Lucas J. Gallant arrived at a High Street house shortly after 1 a.m. Monday for a report of a woman in labor, it wasn’t hard to find the right apartment. The officers could hear 26-year-old Amanda Lesnowski’s screams.
Gallant and Foster headed to Lesnowski’s second-floor bedroom, where they saw that the baby’s head had already emerged.
“I said this was going to be happening here and not the hospital,” Gallant recalled later Monday. Gallant radioed for the responding ambulance and paramedics to “step it up.”
The baby’s father, Anthony Navarro, was holding the baby’s head. Foster, a father of two, went to coach Lesnowski while Gallant, who is an emergency medical technician, focused on the baby.
“A couple contractions later, we delivered one shoulder,” Gallant recalled. “And then the other shoulder, and then the baby was completely born.”
Asked what he was thinking as he helped Lesnowski deliver her fourth child, Gallant said, “It happened so fast, I don’t remember. I just wanted to do it right. It was a new life I was bringing into the world.”
Gallant said he was greatly relieved when the baby, later named Jordan Navarro, started to cry and grimace. He used the ball syringe from his medical kit to suction the baby’s mouth while Foster used clamps from the medical kit to clamp the umbilical cord. Once the paramedics arrived, Navarro was allowed to cut the cord. The newborn was wrapped in blankets and handed to his mother, and the paramedics took over care of Lesnowski and her baby.
Gallant said Lesnowski and Navarro were “kind of shocked” when they realized that he and Foster weren’t from the ambulance, but were police officers. “They were very grateful,” Gallant said. “They said thank you.”
Lesnowski declined to comment when reached Monday afternoon at Rockville General Hospital.
“It was very rewarding,” Gallant said. “Most people in their lives don’t get a chance to deliver a baby.”
And although police officers often find themselves dealing with people at their worst, Monday morning’s call, which lasted no more than five minutes, was a pleasant change.
“It was good to be in a happy situation,” Gallant said. “You help people every once in a while. Something as momentous as delivering a baby, bringing a life into the world, it may never happen again in my career. To be part of it was pretty cool.”
Copyright 2008 The Hartford Courant