Georgia Girl, 7, and 911 Cope With Untimely Visitor

Amanda Lawrence has a future in labor relations. With just a little coaching from a 911 operator, the 7-year-old Acworth, Ga., girl helped to deliver her little brother, who arrived rather suddenly and about 2 1/2 weeks early. “I think I did a great job; it was a good idea I helped little Zachary to be born,” Amanda said after the baby’s untimely arrival. She was about to leave for school when her mother, Teri, went into labor. Amanda helped her mother to a sofa and dialed 911. “I was talking on the phone, and the water broke,” Amanda said. “I could see the baby coming, but the operator kept talking to me and told me to wrap the baby up to keep it warm until the ambulance got there. I was shocked, but I knew what was going on, even though he came out a little purplish--purple-blue.” Amanda gave the operator directions to the house, which was via unmarked streets, got towels for her mother and unlocked the doors for the paramedics. By the time the ambulance arrived, mother and son were doing fine.

--Meanwhile Down Under, a 10-inch-long baby believed to be one of the smallest ever to survive was making good progress in a Sydney, Australia, hospital. Two-week-old Nicole Shiralee Faunce, who weighs only 14.7 ounces, was delivered by Cesarean section 11 weeks prematurely after she stopped growing in the womb. She is being kept alive by a ventilator and has gained 1.4 ounces since her birth. Her parents, Ray and Jenny Faunce, live 90 minutes by car north of Sydney but visit their daughter every other day. “We’d like to come down every day but just can’t afford it,” said Ray Faunce, who works as a firefighter. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the lowest birth weight ever recorded for a surviving baby is 10 ounces. That child, Marian Chapman, was 12.4 inches long when she was born prematurely in South Shields, England, in 1938. She died in 1983.

--Adhering to tradition, Texas-born Henry Catto, the new U.S. ambassador to Britain, traded his Stetson for a top hat to lead a carriage procession to Buckingham Palace and present his credentials to the queen. After a 20-minute private audience with Elizabeth II, Catto, a close friend of President Bush, drawled: “The queen is just the easiest person in the world to talk to.” Then the 58-year-old businessman returned to the U.S. Embassy to fulfill the custom of treating the state footmen to Champagne and their horses to sugar and carrots. Catto is the 27th U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, the 16th-Century palace where envoys still are accredited.