Nurse delivers when it counts

A BERWICK coronary care nurse received a lesson in childbirth last week when she helped deliver a baby in the Dandenong Hospital car park.
Claire Martin, 22, was taking a patient out to their car when she heard a woman screaming. Minutes later the woman had given birth.
“A patient had come in for a procedure and I had taken him out the front of the hospital in a wheelchair and was helping him get into the car,” Ms Martin said.
“Then I heard a woman screaming in the car park near emergency and the ambulance bay.
“I went over and there were no ambulances around and the woman said she was having a baby,” she said.
Ms Martin then tried to put the woman into a wheelchair but soon realised there was no time.
“I tried to put the woman in the (wheel) chair but was not able to move her and she was saying, ‘it’s coming, it’s coming.’
“Thirty seconds later I saw the head and I caught the baby in the car while her friend went inside to get help.
“I then waited with the mum and child for the midwives to come,” she said.
The former St Francis Xavier student has been a coronary care nurse for two years but has studied childbirth as part of her university studies.
“Way back there was one small part of a subject that looked at childbirth at university,” Ms Martin said.
“But it did not teach you how to deliver a baby in a car on your own and catch it when you are both jammed up in the front passenger seat of the car.
“I guess if I had not been there her friend would have caught the baby but I think it was reassuring for the woman to have a nurse there,” she said.
Ms Martin said childbirth had not been as scary as she had expected but she was not planning any career moves in the near future.
“It was actually not that scary and she actually made it look easy,” she said.
“It (the baby) just came straight out within a minute of me seeing her in the car park and her saying the baby was coming.
“Help got there pretty quickly after the birth though and I have heard that mother and baby are doing well,” she said.