Graton volunteers act as mid-wives

GRATON — Members of the Graton Fire Department received a little
more than they bargained for when they answered a call at 9:35 p.m.
Sunday and found a 37-year-old Graton woman on her kitchen floor
having a baby.
But it wasn’t an ordinary delivery for the mother or for the
Graton volunteers.
Although it was her third child, it turned out to be a first for
Graton Deputy Chief Bill Bullard, and Capt. Robert Sabrowski. When
the men came upon the mother, they found that the baby boy was in
breech; his legs and body were out, but his head was still in the
mother’s womb.
Bullard, a health care consultant by day, said that he mostly
coordinated the procedure, and gives credit for the fast work to
Sabrowski. Working in less than optimum circumstances, Sabrowski
managed to extricate the baby’s head, and then used a bulb syringe
to get the pre-birth out of his airway and a bag-valve-mask to
supply the baby with oxygen.
Once the baby was breathing, they began resuscitation efforts to
try to stabilize his heart rate until paramedics could arrive.
EMT Les Mitsouka and paramedic Rob McKay arrived from Sonoma
Life Support to help with the baby and the mother, who needed
medical care after a very difficult birth.
Everyone worked as a team to get the mom and baby into the
ambulance, and Bullard and Sabrowski assisted the paramedic with
the baby’s care all the way to the hospital.
“I’ve been doing EMS work for 23 years and this is a first,”
Bullard said. “We rode in the ambulance with the baby and we
actually saw him go from gray to pink.”
Delivering a baby is something that Emergency Medical
Technicians (EMTs) are trained to do, but it rarely happens.
Sabrowski, an AT&T technician who has been an EMT for nearly 20
years and a volunteer firefighter for 11 years, credits his
training for his fast response.
“We walked in and the baby was partially out and was stuck,”
Sabrowski said. “The training just took over.”
The mother and child were taken to Memorial Hospital in Santa
Rosa, where they were met by hospital staff and the boy entered the
infant ICU.
Although, according to Sabrowski, the delivery only took a few
minutes, it was a couple of hours before they returned to the
Graton Fire house.
“It didn’t really hit me until I got back to the station, and
didn’t really sink in until the next morning,” he said. “It was a
high, so to speak.”
As of Tuesday, the mother and new baby boy were doing well. The
mother was unidentified and unavailable for comment as this
publication went to press.
Graton Fire also credits the Cal Fire engine that was nearby and
responded to the call.
“They did a great job,” Bullard said.