Features
Dad delivers bub with emergency phone coaching
Amy Remeikis 28th August 2008
Emergency medical dispatcher, Daniel Sandeman (back) and Keith Jones (front) with the newborn baby boy.
DANIEL Sandeman's nickname should be Dan the Baby Man after the week he has had.
The emergency medical dispatcher helped deliver one baby over the phone on Monday night and would have helped delivered a second on Tuesday evening – except the Noosa baby couldn't wait and was born before his dad was connected through 000.
But after Julie Jones' contractions went from four minutes to "my water just broke" in the time it took Daniel to send an ambulance to their Woombye home and talk dad Keith through the preparations for keeping Julie comfortable, Daniel chalked up his first phone birth after just four months on the job.
"We had gone through the basic questions and the ambulance was only just up the road, so we were getting ready to hang up," Daniel said.
"When all of a sudden he (Keith) said the head is starting to come out and I had to help him through the birth.
"He was really calm and just did everything I said and it all went very smoothly. Then the ambulance guys came in and whisked them off to hospital.
"It was such a rush. I was on a really big high."
Keith said the last thing he expected to do after a 14-hour day working in Tin Can Bay was deliver his son, but said the experience was amazing.
"I was in bed and I asked her to just wait until the morning," he joked.
"But you just do what you have to. After, I wanted to cry a little bit. It's pretty special. You'd be lost without those triple-0 people though."
Mum and the as yet unnamed 3.040kg baby boy are doing well at Nambour General Hospital and looking forward to returning to normal life.

















