Darell and Lindsay Muzichuk will have quite the story to tell the newest member of their family.
Though many are choosing to give birth at home with the help of midwives and doulas these days, this was not the plan for the Muzichuks, who didn’t quite make it to the delivery room.
In the early hours of Feb. 1, Lindsay gave birth to their second child, 12-day-old daughter Ava, in their St. Albert residence while on the phone with a 911 dispatcher.
Early last Monday, Lindsay awoke with contractions, which she began to time. Since they didn’t seem that painful she decided not to wake her husband right away.
When she did get Darrell up two hours later, around 4:30 a.m., she had trouble getting to the car. Bags packed, shoes on and babysitter in the wings, Lindsay tried to stand. Instantly, she knew she wasn’t going to make it to the hospital.
“The top of the head was starting to emerge,” said Darrell. “So I ran out and told my mom ‘We need to call 911. The baby is coming right now.’ By the time I got back in the bathroom 30 seconds later, Lindsay was basically holding the head, because the head was three-quarters out.”
Darrell’s mother, Lori Mitchell (a longtime St. Albert Gazette graphics designer), who had arrived to watch 20-month-old grandson Emil, walked the couple through the birth. With the help of a 911 dispatcher, she made sure Lindsay was lying down, that Darrell had a towel to catch the baby and a string (or shoelace) to tie the umbilical chord.
Leading up to Ava’s birth, Lindsay had joked about giving birth at home alone, given that her husband worked a few hours out of town.
“I always thought, at most I’ll be home in two or three hours,” remembered Darrell, “this thing is going to take minimum fours hours so you’ll never have to worry about that.”
With Emil the couple had plenty of time to get to the hospital.
Ava was a different story. Lindsay kept waiting for her water to break, but it never did. This led the couple to believe they had a bit more time to prepare for the arrival of their child.
“I can’t believe how fast it was,” said Lindsay. “People told me, second baby will come quicker, but I never thought it would be that quick.”
From waking her husband up to welcoming eight-pound, 15-ounce Ava into the world, the process took 30 to 40 minutes.
The couple stayed relatively calm throughout the event. It wasn’t until Darrell was holding Ava in his arms did he think about how something could have gone wrong.
“There was a moment of ‘Wow, what if there’s a problem? There’s no doctor here.’ There were a couple of seconds of worry that we never thought about until that moment. Fortunately as soon as the baby came out she started crying right away,” he said.
Lindsay remembers checking the baby’s neck to make sure the umbilical chord did not obstruct the baby’s airway. Moments later fire services arrived.
With eight men in uniform crowded in the hallway of their bungalow, Lindsay said that was probably the most overwhelming part of the whole experience. But the couple was glad emergency crews showed up so quickly, in case things had taken a turn for the worst.
Mom and baby are both healthy and at home, and the couple is rejoicing the birth of their daughter, whose sex had been unknown up until those few moments of craziness in the bathroom of their three-generation family home.
