Huntington Beach Dispatcher Instructs Father : Telephone Birth Coach Delivers a First

Nancy Fuhrmann delivered a baby for the first time early Sunday morning--by telephone.

And though there were some anxious moments, mother, father, baby and Fuhrmann--a Huntington Beach Fire Department dispatcher--were doing just fine Sunday night.

It was 2:36 a.m. when Fuhrmann took the 911 emergency call from excited father-to-be David Bachman, 25. His wife, Sharon, was about to give birth at their Huntington Beach home, Bachman said.

Although Bachman had thought far enough ahead to have picked out a name--Bryan Allen if it was a boy--he had not thought of everything.

“I called from downstairs,” Bachman recalled from his wife’s hospital bed Sunday afternoon. “I don’t know what I was thinking. She was upstairs.”

The dispatcher asked: “What is she doing now?”

Bachman answered, “I don’t know. She’s upstairs.”

Bachman hung up the telephone, scampered up the stairs and tried again.

“My wife’s having a baby,” he told Fuhrmann, who remained cool and collected for the entire seven minutes it took to lead Bachman and his wife through the delivery.

Fuhrmann, one of several dispatchers specially trained to handle such medical emergencies from Orange County Central Net communications center in Huntington Beach, calmly instructed the Bachmans step by step, using the department’s written “medical dispatch priority” as a guide.

The written system allows Fuhrmann and other dispatchers to read instructions to often-panicked callers.

Protective Legally

“It keeps you right on track, especially when there’s a hysterical background, and legally it protects you,” Fuhrmann said of the flow-chart system of instructions written by a physician for administering emergency telephone instructions.

Bachman appreciated it.

“I was a wreck,” the new father said. “She was very helpful. I was really impressed, and with the paramedics too.”

But unlike most 911 calls from expectant parents, 8-pound, 7-ounce Bryan Allen Bachman’s arrived before the paramedics could.

Bachman followed Fuhrmann’s orders, easing the delivery and eliciting the first cry from his son, their third child.

“It’s a boy!” the jubilant father exclaimed.

“Congratulations,” Fuhrmann said, then told him to support the infant.

“Wait, wait, I’m having trouble here,” Bachman answered.

“I know,” she said. “I want to hear that baby crying.”

“That’s when I got scared,” Bachman recalled hours later. “I knew that nature would get him out, but there was no paramedic. Just a phone.”

Bachman said his wife held the baby upside down; finally the happy moment: “There’s a cry,” the relieved father reported over the phone.

“I like it when the babies cry--that’s music to my ears,” Fuhrmann said later in the day as she visited the parents and their son at Huntington Beach’s Humana Hospital. “We get a lot of (emergency) calls on young children. When it’s your own child, it really freaks you out.

“They (the Bachmans) did the work. That’s my job: to calm them down and reassure them they can do it. People can do it. They just don’t know it.”

Fuhrmann is one of the Central Net fire dispatchers who have taken special courses and have been licensed as Emergency Medical Dispatchers and Technicians.

The dispatchers--who serve Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, Fountain Valley, Westminster, Santa Ana and Costa Mesa--use a chart containing step-by-step procedures for handling emergencies such as drownings, shooting victims and births.

The charts help ensure that “you don’t get lost in his (the caller’s) emotion,” dispatcher Brenda Crites said.

“It gives us basically a script,” said Steve Rothert, senior dispatcher on duty Sunday at the Huntington Beach Gothard communications center, where the 911 dispatchers are located. “It gives us four to five minutes to get the fire unit to the scene. That four or five minutes can mean the difference between life and death.”

Fuhrmann was prepared to begin giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation instructions if the baby did not begin breathing, Rothert said.

Giving instructions for lifesaving and baby-delivering may not be commonplace, but nearly every dispatcher has had some experience with such tense circumstances. Usually, though, calls for birth help end before the critical moment, when paramedics arrive and take over.

Fuhrmann, who has no children of her own but has delivered a few litters of puppies, was relieved when it was over.

“The ending was really good, and that’s what matters,” she said.

Seven Minutes of Telephone Tension

Following is the conversation between Huntington Beach Fire Department dispatcher Nancy Fuhrmann and David Bachman, whose wife, Sharon, was giving birth to their son, Bryan. The seven-minute conversation began at 2:36 a.m. Sunday.

911 (Fuhrmann): Fire emergency.

Father (Bachman): My wife’s having a baby.

911: Has she had the baby yet?

Father: No. But she says she can’t even move. There are one (contraction) right after the other. It’s coming, she says.

911: Listen to me. Ask her . . . there’s still some time.

Father: The baby is coming out now. I see it.

911: Do you see it crowning? Where is your wife at? Is she on the bed?

Father: Oh my God, I see the head!

911: That’s good.

Father: She’s on the toilet, though. She can’t move.

911: Go get her off the toilet and get her . . .

Father: The baby is coming out.

911: I’ll wait. Get her on the floor.

Father: Get on the floor, Sharon.

The mother’s water breaks. Furmann gives Bachman directions on how to apply pressure to keep the baby from arriving too quickly and how to handle the baby when it arrives.

911: OK, where are we at now? How far is the head out?

Father: It’s not, oh, pushing . . . she’s pushing now. That’s the baby’s head, oh my God!

911: No, it’s great.

Father: Push, Sharon, push! Come on.

911: You’re doing fine. I don’t want her to tear herself. Don’t encourage her to push so much.

Father: Do you want me to pull anything?

911: I want you to put gentle pressure, keep the baby’s head from delivering too fast. I want you to push against her vagina. Do you understand what I’m saying?

Father: OK, the baby’s out.

911: OK, that’s great. Congratulations. How far is the baby out? The entire baby?

Father: The whole way.

911: That’s wonderful. Now tell me is the baby breathing?

Father: No.

911: OK, I’m going to tell you what to do. I want you to get a dry towel. That baby’s going to be slippery. I don’t want any dropping of this baby.

Father: I have her on her back.

911: OK, real good then. I want you to get that dry towel and clean out her mouth a little bit. Is it a boy or girl?

Father: Oh, heh, heh, heh.

911: Hey, this is important.

Father: . . . Her mouth . . . wait a minute.

911: You’re doing fine sir. You’re doing fine.

Father: It’s a boy!

911: Congratulations. OK, now what I want to do is I want you to support that baby.

Father: Wait, wait, I’m having trouble here.

911: I know. I want to hear that baby crying.

Father: Sharon’s holding the baby upside down and the baby is like, you know, coughing. There’s a cry.

911: That’s good. She’s trying to clear her throat away. Who is holding the baby?

Father: My wife is.

911: Give her a clean towel so that baby stays warm.

Father: A clean towel. Wrap the baby in a clean towel, Sharon. Is the baby breathing now? Watch the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

911: Yeah, just leave it.

Father: There he goes. He’s crying!

911: Excellent.

Father: Ho, ho.

The baby’s cries can be heard.