This 9-1-1 operator on the phone is asking critical, routine questions. He has a laid back vibe and a deep, somewhat affected voice, like a surfer might sound.
“Is she breathing? Is there a lot of bleeding?”
Jeff presses pause on the audio recording, looks at me and says, sarcastically, “I think if she weren’t breathing that’s what I’d be calling about, Dude! Like I think we would’ve covered that!”
The surfer-operator continues to ask Jeff questions, “How old is your wife? Where is she? What is she doing?”
“You can hear me thinking, Stop asking me boilerplate questions!” Jeff says.
We are listening to this recording of an emergency phone call made in 2005. A few weeks after the call, we asked the Los Angeles Fire Department for a physical copy of the tape. The cassette came in the mail in an ugly, yellow-colored mailing envelope. At some point Jeff digitized the recording and here we are listening to it now, coming out of his phone. It’s a technological marvel!
“It’s some funny shit.” Jeff continues. “The guy is trying to figure out what's going on by asking these questions. It could be any number of things, but he doesn’t know what.” From this vantage point, sitting in our quiet kitchen, we know how the story will end. But on the night of this recorded phone call we were both, as we liked to say during the Bush Years, in a state of Shock and Awe.
It was a Monday night and we watched “Kill Bill'' which Jeff had been trying to get me to watch for weeks, but I’m not a fan of violent movies. I prefer musicals and character driven stories about female relationships. He finally wore me down and I agreed. After the movie I felt a little queasy and didn’t even finish eating my bowl of sorbet. (Wow!) Now it was 1130pm and the evening had taken a bloody turn of its own.
“How many months pregnant is your wife?” The mundane questions continue.
“She’s 39* weeks.” Jeff’s voice on the tape is very breathy because he is understandably super-duper stressed out.
Surfer Operator starts mumbling like he’s doing the math. Jeff is impatient and needs to communicate the urgency of our situation, “The baby is coming out RIGHT NOW!”
I had contractions throughout the movie. They never stopped. In fact, they hadn’t stopped all week. I had been having contractions and Braxton hicks -- the first stage of labor -- at regular intervals for eight days. I ignored them as best I could and ran around doing all kinds of things to pass the time. Two days prior to this night I went to a birthday party and on a long walk with Jeff and Darla, who was fifteen months old at the time. Everyday, all day the contractions would get really strong for about twenty minutes at a time and then slow back down. All week this emotional roller coaster went on.
That morning I woke up at 5am and called my mom. “Today is the day” I told her. But by the evening there were still only three people in our family. Around that time Jeff suggested we go to a Dodger game. Thank all the stars in heaven I did not listen to that suggestion! Instead he took Darla to the park and I rested, then got up and made dinner. After we ate, Jeff put Darla to bed and I washed dishes. Then we went upstairs to watch “Kill Bill.” When it was over, I took out my contacts and rolled over to sleep, totally defeated. Another day with no baby.
“Is she having contractions at this time? Is there any serious bleeding?”
Jeff comes on the line again, frantic, talking to me off to the side of the phone, “Nonni just lie yourself… Um I’m sorry?” His attention is divided.
Here in 2023 we both crack up at Jeff’s frustration. Surfer Operator is asking him questions and he’s trying to stop me from -- who knows what the hell I’m doing? Probably trying to organize something I’ve just found, and Jeff really needs me to lie myself down already!
“I can just imagine,” Jeff says. “I’m sure you were trying to do something. It’s not that surprising.”
“I was probably trying to get comfortable!” I defend my pregnant self.
“NO! You were in the middle of labor. You weren’t trying to get comfortable. I know how you are when you’re in labor. There’s not a lot of thinking going on. You were getting distracted, trying to do something else.” He shakes his head like a man who’s been married for twenty-one years.
“Where is your wife now?”
“She’s kneeling.” Jeff takes a deep breath and speaks really clearly so he doesn’t have to repeat himself.
Lying in bed after the movie I had two, big contractions and Jeff sat up to time them with his phone clock. After a few minutes I said, “Oh forget it! They are going away again.” I lay there in bed for about two minutes and then POW! I heard a pop (Jeff didn’t hear it.) It felt like a bomb went off in my stomach! The pain was so intense I couldn’t stop moaning. The pop was my water breaking, but when I rolled out of bed to go throw up from the pain, there was no liquid anywhere.
Jeff immediately switched into Super Dad Mode and raced downstairs to get everything together for a trip to the hospital. Before my first contraction was over he had called his sister to come over. Next he called our doctor. After the contraction I yelled down to him, “I’M OKAY!” because I thought my moaning was freaking him out.
“Okay. I’m going to tell you exactly what to do. Stay with me on the phone.”
“This was the point where I realized, Okay this guy is going to get us through this. It was scary. Especially asking me about the bleeding.” Tears come to Jeff’s eyes as he explains this part of the story. “I was panicked. I know what I was thinking: I’m not qualified to answer this question. This is important. Two lives are at risk and I'm completely not equipped. That’s scary. But when he starts giving instructions… Now we’ve got stuff I can do! This is good. Tell me these things.”
“I was never scared.” I say, and it’s true. “I thought about calling someone, a friend, to come help us. But, I was never afraid.”
“The only thing that helped was that I'd seen Darla born. When I saw her born I thought, Oh, no. This is not right. So I knew a crowning baby looks insane. If Zane had been my first live birth I would have completely flipped out!” He laughs again.
Our 9-1-1 operator asks again about serious bleeding. It’s one and a half minutes into the recording of the call. He tells us he’s sending help to us now and tells Jeff to monitor my breathing and to stay on the phone. People must hang up because they are panicked.
“The baby’s head is coming out!” Jeff announces again to the operator, then says to me, “Nonni you gotta move your hand, Baby.” Our doctor had told Jeff on the phone a few minutes ago to get me into the car and not to let me push, so I was trying to go against my strong instinct to push. My hand was trying to hold back the forces of nature.
Two minutes into the call the operator confirms, “You can see the baby’s head?!” Then, “Stay on the line. Let’s help her. Let’s do it right now!” He has turned into the Captain of our Baby Team. We love him! “Get her on her back, right now.”
He confirms our address. “Where is she now? Get her as close to the phone as possible. I’m going to tell you how to help. Has the baby been born yet?”
Two and a half minutes into the call. “Make sure all clothing below her waist is removed. Don’t let her go to the bathroom.”
“I wish I could’ve seen my face at this point. You were on all fours, and I saw his head, and I thought, “Oh, no. We are fucked! We are not going anywhere.”
“Is anyone else home with you?”
“Just my daughter who is most certainly not going to be helping.”
As we listen to the recording, Jeff is crying again. “It’s so crazy. SO fucking crazy. I’m definitely stressed. I’m trying to answer his questions and keep an eye on you.”
“Oh yeah!” I say with a big dose of sarcasm, “You are really working hard!”
“I’m starting to appreciate my contribution!” Jeff chuckles a little at the absurdity. We both know this whole thing would’ve gone down just fine without him or Surfer Operator Captain. Zane and I never had a doubt!
Three minutes into the call, SOC gives Jeff a list of assignments, “Get a string or shoelace. Get a dry towel for the baby and a sheet or blanket to keep the mother warm.”
“I got a sheet. I got a towel. I’m taking my shoelaces off right now.”
2023 Jeff feels proud. “I’m impressed I got all of those instructions.”
“Jeff. You didn’t! I had already gotten the towel and the sheet. You didn’t get anything!”
“Oh, maybe all I had to get was the shoelace.”
“Yeah. Maybe!”
While Jeff was downstairs trying to comfort Darla who was crying from being woken up by him trying to pack his suitcase for the hospital at literally the last possible minute, I had puked in the toilet and then heaved my swollen, exhausted self back to the bedroom.
The only reason I didn’t stay in the bathroom was because I knew the new floor tile wasn’t sealed yet and wasn’t supposed to get wet. Our janky, part-time contractors were taking much longer than expected to finish remodeling the upstairs of our house to be a master suite.
I crawled off the tile and onto the hardwood floor. I was like a tiger in a field making a nest, grabbing towels and sheets off the bed, pulling them onto the floor around me. Then Jeff came back upstairs and asked if he should call 9-1-1. That option hadn’t occurred to me until he said it, and thank god he did. He had reasonable fear and understood the severity of the situation. Me, I probably would’ve just pushed the baby out and said, Okay we’re all good. Time for bed.
Three and a half minutes into the call, our SOC is calming things down.“Good!” he says to Jeff. “Check to see if she’s pushing or straining.”
“Okay, Baby. It’s gonna be alright. Just keep your legs apart, alright? It’s okay, Baby. It’s okay.”
Is he talking to me, or to himself? Because he sounds really frantic.
Thirty seconds later he says again, “I can see the head.”
While SOC read out more instructions from his manual about applying firm, but gentle pressure, Jeff was catching Zane in his bare hands which we realized upon reflection, he hadn’t washed. He set the little, 7 pound fresh human straight down with his little butt on the floor.
“I remember thinking, This doesn't seem like what I should be doing, setting him on the floor. Zane was sticky -- tacky -- which is interesting. You don’t want to drop him. It was more like grease than oil.”
“Okay the baby’s out now!” Jeff has the phone in the crook of his neck, holding our baby with both hands.
“The baby is all the way out?”
We both laugh at SOC’s reaction.
“The baby is all the way out.”
“All the way out? Great!”
“There’s no way they trained him for that. Saying ‘Great!’ is not in the script.”
“Dry the baby off with the towel.” Surfer Operator Captain says four and a half minutes into the craziest phone call of Jeff’s life.
Somehow I commandeer the phone. “Hi. This is me. Okay, tell me what to do. Tell me what to do.” I sound excited and maybe a little manic. I give him an update, “The baby is crying.”
He says something from the script, paging down to see what to do after the baby comes out.
“What did you say about hips and shoulders?” I ask.
“Disregard that because the baby has been born. Don’t cover the baby’s face…” and he goes on to walk us through how to tie off the umbilical cord with Jeff’s shoelace. This is some real MacGuyver shit! I repeat every word he says to Jeff. I am totally lucid and in charge.
“Hi little guy.” I coo to the baby between instructions.
He tells me to place the baby on the mother’s stomach, on my stomach. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Uh, I dunno. But the ultrasound said a boy.”
“He’s a boy.” You hear Jeff’s voice in the distance.
“It’s a boy. Jeff saw it.” Six minutes into the tape.
2023 Jeff cracks up again. “It’s the most insane thing ever captured! I’m so glad we made it through.”
Once the shoelace is tied Jeff takes the phone back. He still sounds pretty stressed out, asking me if the baby is still breathing and I’m in the distance having a wonderful little moment, saying, “Hi, Little Fella.”
“Do not pull on the cord.”
The paramedics arrive at six and a half minutes.
“Is she doing alright?” SOC asks.
“Yeah, we’re doing fine.” Jeff is finally calming down, but still he tells me to keep breathing.
“You both did a great job. Sir, that’s awesome. You delivered your own baby. That’s a pretty awesome feeling sir.”
Jeff gets all teary on the phone and says thank you.
“Take care. Congratulations.”
The firefighters and EMT truck came upstairs to find us.
Jeff continues his version of the story, “I can still see it, and I’m telling ya, if I ever need to cry on cue, all I need to do is imagine the paramedic’s face when he came up around those steps. He was bracing himself for disaster because evidently most accidental home births are a result of drug addled mothers. I can only imagine what he was expecting. Then he looked around at us and was like, Oh, this is actually going to be okay. He set his EMT pack down at the top of the stairs and sat down on it.”
There were 3 firefighters upstairs who talked me through the delivery of the placenta. As awkward as that was, I found a way to make light of the situation. I was so happy. Then Jeff brought me my glasses and I quickly realized my extreme good fortune. These firefighters were hot, hot and hotter! Happy Birthday, Zane!
Once the medical stuff was over, Jeff went downstairs to sign release papers in order to decline the ambulance ride to the hospital.
One of the first responders, Ernie, was celebrating his 50th birthday. (That means he’s turning 68 right now!) He was hanging out with Auntie Jen and our daughter in her bedroom downstairs most of the time. Jen and Darla eventually came up to meet Zane. I was laying with him on the wet, bloody sheets. The POP I felt in my stomach after the movie ended was his water breaking, and nothing leaked out because his little head was acting like a stopper. When he came out, a wave of fluid came out behind him.
Jen held him for a minute because my after birth contractions were so painful I thought I was going to be sick again.
I cried a little bit once everyone left us alone and the shock started to wear off. His little eyes were staring at me, trying to figure out what the hell happened. We had been through a lot together! He was pink and purple and pasty; and you wonder, how could anyone with that coloring be cute? But he was adorable to me.
One of the uniformed first responders put our pruney, fresh baby into the car seat so we could drive to the Good Samaritan hospital in DTLA and I could get checked out by my regular OB. Jeff rolled me and Zane in a wheelchair through the front door. The security guard asked, “You’re back already?”
Jeff said to me, “This is going to be confusing for everybody.”
The remembrance of Zane’s birth only comes to Jeff’s mind when we expressly bring it up around his birthday every few years. “As incredible as the story is, as miraculous and unique,” he says, “it pales in comparison to the amazing things he does in his life with us every day.”
That is a lovely sentiment, I know. But for me the memory feels a lot different. I think of Zane’s birth story ALL THE TIME. I don’t care how corny it sounds, that night fundamentally altered my self-perception. Not just in a now-I’m-a-mom way; I was already a mom! I’m talking about sitting on the cold, hard ground and getting through a physical trauma on my own. Jeff was a comforting presence, true. But let’s be real. I did all of the physical work. Also, the everyday me who worries whether all the forks are facing the same direction in the drawer? That person was totally eclipsed during this experience by my primal self who would bite the head off a snake to protect my children. Every time I am in serious pain or going through something physically agonizing, I think to myself, I gave birth on the floor. I can handle this. Every time I try to jump on a trampoline or sneeze while carrying a heavy object, I think of Zane’s birth story. Sometimes when I look up to see his face rising many inches above my own, I think about how little he was that night.
Now he’s grown and ready to start his adult life out in the world. His departure from the nest of our home may not be as physically painful for me as his birth, but it’s gonna hurt. And I will get through it. Jeff will be with me, still swearing, still crying and laughing about whatever happens. But I can do it. I delivered a baby on the floor!
Happy Birthday, Zane-o!
Jeff’s playing in A Little Night Music, another wonderful Sondheim musical playing at the Pasadena Playhouse for the next 3-4 weeks. Here’s a 45 second teaser where you can hear his clarinet prowess.
Thanks for reading, but please don’t share this story with any women who might be giving birth soon. It tends to freak them out a lot.
love to you,
Shannon/Nonni
What a crazy story. You tell it in a way that makes me feel like I'm there. (Although I'm glad I wasn't lol). Great photos, too. Zane was the cutest bebe. :)
Yay ZANE! Good job to you all. Great story telling too.