By Julie Mehta
The May 2 open house at Redwood Middle School nearly got an unexpected guest in the form of Christy, a six-pound, 12-ounce baby girl born to a woman who went into labor in a car parked at the school.
The situation gave off-duty operating-room nurse Karen Walter the chance to test her training in unconventional surroundings.
Walter, who works at Urgent Care Center-Camino Medical Group, had just finished her shift and, still in her hospital uniform, was hurrying to see her son Adam in a skit at the open house when she spotted a woman waving to her frantically from a car.
When Walter realized the woman was in labor and was having contractions only minutes apart, she called 911 on her car phone. The Saratoga Fire Department got the call at 8:21 p.m., and four firefighters rushed to the scene. One of those happened to be Walter's neighbor, Fire Capt. Bill Morrison.
"This was a rarity. It doesn't happen too often," said Morrison, who had never encountered such a situation before.
As the firefighters gave the mother oxygen and draped the car with blankets, Walter examined the woman and found she could already feel the top of the baby's head. An ambulance arrived but could not get to the car because the parking lot was crammed full of cars, one of which was parked in the fire lane. Meanwhile, the baby's father could not hear himself being paged because he was inside the school watching a film with his son, who will be attending Redwood next year.
So the baby's mother clung to Walter for support.
"She was so scared and kept squeezing my hand. She kept saying I was her angel," said Walter, who is still awed by the experience. A gurney was rolled out to the mother and she was taken to the ambulance.
A firefighters and paramedic delivered the baby as they were rolling the gurney into Los Gatos Community Hospital about half an hour after Walter first called for help. Christy is the third child for the parents, who asked that their names be withheld.
Walter says the last time she encountered a crisis medical situation in an uncontrolled setting was when she administered CPR to a little girl while working as a lifeguard over 20 years ago.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, May 22, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved