Looking for a Few Good Midwives at El Toro’s Gate

TUSTIN — Moriah Monique Yancey just couldn’t wait a minute longer.

The baby girl arrived rather suddenly late Friday--in a car parked at the main gate of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, with three military policemen serving as midwives.

Kimberly Yancey, 28, went into labor just before 8 p.m. Friday, 10 days ahead of schedule. An hour later, she informed her husband that it was time.

“But last time, when she said it was time, it was 36 hours,” Marine Staff Sgt. Avery Yancey, 29, said Saturday. So he took the couple’s first child, Martez, 5, to a nearby baby-sitter. He returned home to find his wife struggling down the steps of their home and panting, explaining that the baby’s arrival was imminent.

With Irvine Medical Center about six miles away, the couple headed for the air station’s main gate on Red Hill Avenue. Sure enough, two minutes after the Yanceys reached it, Moriah arrived there too, weighing 6 pounds, 12 ounces.

Avery Yancey credited Sgt. Ronald Cherry, Cpl. Jason C. Hoffman and Lance Cpl. J.T. Thomas with assists on the delivery.

“Sgt. Cherry, him and I, we were laughing and hugging--we were loud,” Yancey said Saturday from his wife’s hospital room. “I don’t know what people driving through the gate must have been thinking.”

Yancey said he was there for the birth of his first daughter too, “but this one was really amazing.” Mother and daughter were doing “just great” Saturday, he said.

And as for that ’94 Chevy Beretta that served as an impromptu delivery room, he mused: “I don’t know if we’ll ever get rid of that car.”