Man delivers baby on the side of the road "thanks to George Clooney"

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En route to hospital, man delivers wife’s baby at side of the road

By Mark Brownlee, Ottawa Citizen September 12, 2012

How else but from watching hours and hours of Clooney’s television hospital drama ER would Mike Meakin know how to deliver a baby in a car at the side of the road?

Meakin’s wife Lola gave birth to Tsarina at 7:52 a.m. Wednesday morning on Greenbank Road in Ottawa’s southwest end — just a few minutes from the couple’s destination, the Queensway-Carleton Hospital.

Not that he’s taking too much of the credit.

“It’s more a case of ‘catch the baby and put it up on Mom’s chest,’ that’s all I did,” the 44-year-old said in an interview from the hospital room with Tsarina wrapped in blankets as her Mom held her on a nearby bed.

“Mom and baby did most of the work.”

The Barrhaven residents had always planned to have the baby at the Queensway-Carleton, but they wanted to wait until Lola’s contractions were four minutes apart before getting into the car. They set off at 7 a.m.

As they were heading to the hospital, though, the contractions closed to three minutes apart.

That was when, according to her husband, Lola said, “The baby’s coming.”

By the time he pulled over to a ditch close to Hunt Club Road and got around to the other side of the car, the baby’s head was coming out. It was too late to even get instructions from the paramedic who was directing him through the speakerphone he had placed on the dash.

“He was definitely very excited,” said Simon Vos, the paramedic who spoke with him. “They were driving to the hospital because she was ... having contractions and then she just ended up delivering in the car. It’d be a shock to anyone, I’m sure.”

Tsarina — blue-eyed and weighing eight pounds, nine ounces — was born about three minutes after Mike picked up the phone, Vos said. Paramedics arrived a short time later to “clamp and cut the umbilical chord,” according to their news release.

The two parents, their newborn and their two-year-old daughter Ceilidh were a little tired as they sat in their Queensway-Carleton hospital room Wednesday afternoon — “Dad needs a drink,” said Mike, an engineer — but happy that everything worked out.

“I’m glad he did as good as he did,” said Lola, a 30-year-old. “He exceeded my expectations.”

Deliveries in cars and at home happen more frequently than ordinary people think. Vos said he handled a similar call about three months ago.

Like Wednesday’s birth, most of them end happily

“That’s the worry: are there going to be complications?” said Mike. “That’s what you’re worried about, so we’re certainly very thankful that things were very simple.”