OAK VIEW : 911 Dispatcher Helps Woman Deliver Baby

An Oak View woman who gave birth at her family’s home Monday became the first in Ventura County to be coached through delivery by a 911 dispatcher.

Help arrived about 30 seconds after Cindy White, 19, gave birth to a 6-pound, 15-ounce daughter, Taylor Nicole. Paramedics cut and tied the umbilical cord and took mother and daughter to Ojai Valley Community Hospital where they were pronounced in good health, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Cradling her sleeping newborn in a blanket, White said the baby came quicker than she’d expected. After having contractions through the night, White had gone to the Ojai hospital around 6 a.m. Monday morning, but was told to go home and wait at least several hours.

Around 11 a.m., White’s contractions became more intense and more frequent. Suddenly, White told her mother, Raquel White, it was too late to drive to the hospital.

“I was telling her, ‘Call the hospital,’ ” she said. “Then I said, ‘No, call the ambulance because it’s coming out.’ ”

That’s when the call came into Kathee Wilson in the Ventura County fire communications center at the Camarillo Airport. As emergency crews raced to the family’s Burnham Road address, Wilson began coaching Raquel White to help with her daughter’s delivery.

Following a two-page set of instructions called the “Childbirth Sequence,” Wilson told Raquel White to grab three clean towels and support the baby’s head as it emerged. A minute later, the baby’s whole body had come into the world.

“We told her to clean the mucous out of the mouth and eyes,” Wilson said. “The baby was screaming, it was so cute.”

Several hours after the delivery, Raquel White, a grandmother for the first time, stood beaming in her daughter’s hospital room.

“Every time she had a contraction, we would hold our hands together. I would tell her to take a breath and rest,” she recalled.

County fire dispatchers began using the medical instruction cards, a program called Emergency Medical Dispatch, after going through a 40-hour training course in February. Since then, dispatchers have handled hundreds of calls, with emergencies ranging from broken arms to asthma attacks to a severe case of the flu, said dispatching supervisor Vicki Crabtree.

But until Monday, dispatchers had never helped someone give birth over the phone.

“This time we went from start to finish and everything turned out fine,” Crabtree said. “That makes you feel good.”