By Michael Hasch
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
PITTSBURGH — Three-year-old A’nya Funches asked her pregnant mother Tuesday to allow her to see her unborn baby sister.
“She said, ‘Mom, bring my sister out.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ ” said Questa Giles, 30, of Charleroi. “But maybe it does.”
Giles delivered A’nya’s sister several hours later during the snowstorm early yesterday in the back seat of a car parked outside the Blue Flame Restaurant on Route 51 in Jefferson Hills.
Giles, 30, and her newborn daughter, Emani Wilson, were scheduled to be discharged from Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC in Oakland this morning.
“Emani, which means ‘faith in God,’ is doing very well. She’s just laying here looking at me,” Giles said from her hospital room last night. “For her to be born out like that, she is perfect, nothing wrong or anything. Thank God for that.”
Giles and A’nya were spending Tuesday night at the home of Giles’ mother, Gelinda Giles, in Donora, when contractions began about 2 a.m.
“They were really, really bad, so I took a shower and changed while my mother took my daughter to the neighbor’s,” said Questa Giles, who works at World Kitchens Inc. in Charleroi.
“The contractions were like six or seven minutes apart. We were on our way to Magee’s on (the Mon Valley Expressway). When we got to the place you pay, I jumped out of the car because I felt I needed to stand up. My mother asked me if I wanted to call an ambulance, and I told her she’d better,” Giles said.
The 911 operator told Gelinda Giles that it was unknown how soon an ambulance could get there because of the snow, so the women kept driving toward the hospital.
“The operator stayed on the phone the whole time and told my mother to find a place to pull over and to get a shoelace because if they ambulance didn’t make it in time, she was going to have to deliver the baby and tie off the umbilical cord,” Questa Giles said. “My mother said, ‘What? Oh my God! Oh my God! That’s crazy!’ ”
Gelinda Giles spotted the restaurant and decided to pull off.
“I would say about five minutes later the police showed up and my water broke. The lady officer kept holding my hand, trying to keep me calm, and the male officer kept saying, ‘Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.’ The contractions speeded up, and the male officer said he saw the baby’s head and to go ahead and push. About a minute later, she was there,” Questa Giles said.
Jefferson Hills police officers said a sergeant in the department, William Potts, delivered the 7-pound, 8-ounce baby girl who is 20{1/2} inches tall. Officer Stephanie Behers was the other officer to respond.
Neither could be reached for comment.
“The ambulance arrived about a minute later, wrapped her in blankets and cut the umbilical cord and put a clamp on it,” said Giles, who is grateful for the officers’ efforts.
“I would like to track them down so I can thank them,” she said. “It was a wild experience I definitely won’t forget.”
Copyright 2010 Tribune Review Publishing Company