Newsday
SUFFOLK COUNTY, N.Y. — For the first time in his nine-year law enforcement career, Suffolk Police Officer David Antonacci helped deliver a baby on the job — a memory, he said Saturday, that will stay with him for a long while.
“It is one of the better things that happened in the line of duty,” Antonacci said.
Antonacci, along with other officers and a Halesite Fire Department ambulance, responded to a call Friday about 6:45 p.m. from Diane Maltese, of Huntington, who was 29 weeks pregnant and whose water had broken, police said.
Maltese was having contractions, Antonacci said Saturday, and while transporting her by ambulance to Huntington Hospital, he noticed the baby’s head was crowning.
“As we were coming through the emergency room doors, she gave one big push and that’s where she gave birth,” Antonacci said.
A nurse caught the baby and Antonacci, who is also a New York State certified paramedic, cut the umbilical cord, he said.
The prematurely-born baby, who has yet to be named, was transferred Friday night to Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park.
“So far, so good,” Maltese said Saturday of her son’s condition. “Every time I call, they say he’s doing well.”
Maltese is in stable condition at Huntington Hospital and was due to be released Sunday.
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