A 28-year-old Co Dublin woman has described how she gave birth to a girl at a garage in Swords, Co Dublin, two weeks ago.
Amy Balfe from Rush, North Co Dublin, gave birth while on her way to the Rotunda Hospital with her partner Thomas Donnery.
Realising she wouldn't make it to the maternity hospital on time, she asked Mr Donnery to stop at a Topaz garage in Lissenhall, in Swords, as she thought her waters were about to break.
Minutes later, she gave birth to her daughter, Katie.
Ms Balfe, who was one day overdue when the drama unfolded, had been sent home from the maternity hospital the previous day because, she says, she was only 3cm dilated.
“I had a rough night that night but had no labour pains. At 5.30pm I said to Thomas: ‘I think this is it’. At that point my contractions were coming six minutes apart,” she said.
By 7.45pm the couple were in the car and on the way to the hospital on Parnell Square.
“It was only in the car that I realised that everything was happening much too quickly,” she said.
“As it happens, I had worked at the garage and when I saw it was coming up, I asked Thomas to pull in. I thought I needed to go to the toilet. Once we were in the garage, I knew something was happening so I asked him to call an ambulance.”
The father-to-be reached for his phone but realised he’d left it in the car. He went to ask staff to call the emergency services and by the time he returned to the toilets his first child had been born and was screaming the place down.
“I looked down and saw the top of her head,” Ms Balfe said. “I did one push and the head came out. After another push she came out completely and I caught her in my arms.”
The couple checked the baby’s vital signs, made sure she was "properly pink" and crying loudly enough and then wrapped her in her dad’s hoodie to keep her warm.
There was a further complication as the umbilical cord had tangled around the baby and Ms Balfe’s legs and Mr Donnery spent several minutes unravelling it. A fire brigade arrived on the scene and a fireman cut the cord.
“They couldn’t believe how calm I was,” said Ms Balfe. “But as soon as I felt the head, I knew I had to calm down. I knew I couldn’t panic. Because I’d worked in the garage for four years I knew where I was and I think that helped me relax.”
Mr Donnery said he too was calm. “I only started panicking when we got to the hospital,” he said. “When it is actually happening you have no choice but to relax and do what needs to be done. It is your baby and they need you to be calm,” he said.
The child was almost inevitably dubbed “Little Miss Topaz” by hospital staff but her parents have called her Katie Rose. She is, her mother said, “very relaxed and very content”.
The couple returned to the scene this morning where the retail director of the Topaz, Frank Gleeson presented Katie with a necklace and bracelet made out of Topaz stones, which is, by coincidence, the birth stone for November.
