Baby by Phone : Father Improvises in Do-It-Yourself Delivery With Help From Paramedic

Wedged between callers reporting heater fires and heart attacks came the anxious voice of Annette Diamond of Canoga Park.

“My daughter . . . the head’s out up to the chin. My daughter’s having a baby,” Diamond told Edward Martin, a Los Angeles Fire Department dispatcher.

Martin responded in his calmest tones to the 3:50 a.m. call.

“All right, let me tell you what to do,” he said. “Just stay on the line; we’re dispatching paramedics right away, ma’am.”

Diamond turned the phone over to her son-in-law, Stan Strom.

“Is there an ambulance on the way?” Strom asked.

“Yes, they’re already on their way. Let me try to help you until we get there, OK?” Martin advised.

Martin had delivered two babies on his runs as a paramedic, and he had worked on the 911 emergency line since 1985, but this was shaping up to be the first time he coached a delivery over the phone.

He ran through a series of precautions: Support the baby’s head and shoulders as it arrives, make sure the mother is not sitting up straight, get clean towels ready to wash and wrap the baby.

Then, Strom broke in: “There’s an arm and shoulder,” he said.

“OK, good, good, good, good,” Martin said. “That’s good. Here comes the baby. The baby’s coming?”

“Yeah, the baby’s coming,” Strom said.

“OK, then you just support the baby,” Martin said.

“The baby’s out . . . . It’s making gurgling noises,” Strom said.

Seven minutes after Diamond called 911, Daniel Philip Strom--all 7 pounds, 15 ounces of him--was born to Debbie Strom. He was punctual: It was Jan. 6, the day he was due.

Paramedics arrived in time to cut the umbilical cord and take the mother and baby from her bedroom to the hospital for a checkup.

While city fire dispatchers receive eight or nine phone calls a day from worried expectant parents, it is unusual for a baby to be born before paramedics arrive, department spokesman Gary Svider said.

On Thursday, the two adult Stroms sat in the cool beige and blue living room of their Canoga Park home, matter-of- factly recounting the story, which was recorded on a Fire Department tape. Baby Daniel was the only family member who seemed agitated--and only because he was hungry.

Stan Strom, a computer engineer, boasted that he never panicked during the birth. And during a news conference, Martin also applauded the father for his composure.

“A lot was instinct. I just needed somebody to guide me through it, really,” Stan Strom said, cupping his hands to demonstrate how he cradled Daniel’s head during delivery.

“I was too busy to panic, anyway,” he said. “I almost didn’t know what hit me until I was in the hospital. . . .”

Daniel is the Stroms’ second son, so they attribute some of their relaxed attitude to experience--at least the birthing process was familiar.

What was unfamiliar was the speed with which the top of the baby’s head appeared--less than two hours after Debbie Strom, a certified public accountant, woke up in hard labor.

“I’d kind of been having contractions all day . . . but I ignored them,” she said. “They weren’t that strong.”

Even when Stan Strom’s groggy counting indicated contractions were coming two minutes apart, the couple thought it would be silly to leave for the hospital right away. They live only three minutes from Humana Hospital West Hills, and their first son, 3-year-old Benjamin, had arrived after nearly 14 hours of labor.

“I figured the contractions would get farther apart and then come back again,” Debbie Strom said.

How will the Stroms describe the impromptu home birth to Daniel when he grows up?

“We’ll tell him, ‘Your parents were too stupid to go to the hospital,’ ” Debbie Strom said.