911 Dispatcher Helps Deliver Baby From a Long Distance

A Fullerton Fire Department dispatcher talked a pregnant woman through the delivery of a baby girl Thursday night while paramedics dashed to the scene.

The infant arrived before the paramedics. And mother, daughter and dispatcher were reported doing fine.

Lis Creamer, lead dispatcher for Net 4 emergency dispatching service for Fullerton and other north Orange County communities, received a 911 call at 8:35 p.m. from a woman in the 3100 block of East Yorba Linda Boulevard.

The caller was either the mother or the sister of Julie Grode, who “was ready to have her baby,” Creamer said.

“I asked them to bring her close to the phone and at that time her water broke and the baby started crowning immediately,” said Creamer, herself the mother of two adult children. “I said, ‘Lie her down and position her for the birth process with clean towels.’ ”

Just last week, Creamer and other dispatchers attended special childbirth classes.

Creamer said mother and daughter were doing well after being transported to Placentia-Linda Community Hospital in Placentia.

But during all the commotion, there was some confusion on the part of the new mother’s relatives, she said.

“They thought it was a boy, but the medics looked and saw it was a girl,” Creamer said.

It was Grode’s second child.