NORTH ROYALTON, Ohio – Marie Stolarski says she can handle just about any type of phone call, but Monday night was a first.
“We got a 911 call and I hear a guy screaming. I’m trying to get information from him, and I finally realize his wife was in labor,” she said.
Stolarski is a 911 dispatcher for the North Royalton Police Department.
She and another 911 dispatcher, Amanda Tarase, walked the man through what he needed to do.
“So we pick up and we learn very quickly that this baby was coming,” Tarase said. “He was beside himself. He was excited, upset. He didn’t know what to expect.”
The man on the line, James Dean, was on the phone with them for six minutes. By the end of the call, he and his sister delivered the baby on the bathroom floor of his home.
“I hear ‘I can see the baby’s head, and I’m like OK, here we go,” Stolarski said. “The next thing we knew, we heard the baby crying and we were so happy.”
An ambulance made it to the family’s home on Walnut Hill Drive and rushed James’ newborn and wife Jennifer to nearby Southwest General Hospital in Middleberg Heights.
Jennifer had been to the hospital earlier that day, believing she was in labor. She says staff said she wasn’t far enough along, so they sent her home.
“It was crazy, but I’m so glad the outcome was this right here,” she said pointing to her newborn son.
James Robert Dean was born at 7:47 p.m. Monday. Named after his dad, baby James weighed 6 pounds 1 ounce and was delivered at 38 weeks.
Yet, Jennifer said she was surprised and slightly frustrated that she was returned home. Her husband expressed the same frustration with 911 dispatchers.
“Like the paramedics said, ‘Thank God the cord wasn’t wrapped around him’ or any, you know, extra bleeding on my part or something,” Jennifer said. “You just don’t know, but for it to all just happen so quick and for it to turn out well, that’s all I was worried about.”