By Adam Foxman
Ventura County Star (California)
MOORPARK, Calif. — Curran and Clint Cummings of Moorpark thought their second child would be born much like their first — in a hospital, under a doctor’s care.
Instead, Kaya Cummings was born Tuesday in the front seat of her parents’ car with the help of Ventura County Fire Department personnel. The car was parked in front of the Oak Park home of Kaya’s uncle and aunt, where her parents had stopped to drop off her 3-year-old brother, Calvin.
“The whole thing was pretty surreal and amazing. It was shocking,” said Clint, 35, who teaches special education at Agoura High School. “If it wasn’t for the paramedics and the Fire Department, who knows what would have happened.”
Kaya weighed 7 pounds, 14 ounces and measured 20 inches long when she was born, her parents said. She had a full head of hair and looked healthy when the firefighters and paramedics who helped deliver her visited the family Wednesday at Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks.
Baby was overdue
Curran, 32, was lying on the front seat of their Nissan Xterra with her feet up on the dashboard when she gave birth to Kaya about 1:45 a.m. Tuesday, her husband said.
Curran was a couple of days overdue, but she and Clint thought they had plenty of time to get to the hospital, they said.
After her contractions started about 11 p.m. Monday, they packed up and headed toward Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills. They left their Moorpark home and drove toward Oak Park, where they planned to drop off Calvin with Clint’s brother, Kyle Cummings, and sister-in-law, Cyndee.
They were passing Reyes Adobe Road, about three miles from their first destination, when Curran’s water broke, she said.
She and Clint still thought they had time to get to the hospital, because when she gave birth to her son, she was in labor for 16 hours after her water broke.
But when they arrived at the Oak Park home, Curran’s contractions were growing closer and more intense.
Call to 911 brings help
Cyndee, who is studying to be a nurse, convinced Clint there wasn’t time to get to a hospital, and he needed to call 911, he said. Engine Company 36 arrived about five minutes later.
Curran asked firefighter-paramedic Woody Harward if he had ever delivered a baby before, Clint said. Harward said he had — several weeks earlier when he helped deliver his own child.
Within another five minutes, Kaya was born. “It all happened so fast,” Curran said.
Medical personnel then let Clint lean over the driver’s seat to cut his daughter’s umbilical cord with medical scissors, Harward said.
As they held Kaya and posed for photos with the family Wednesday morning, the firefighters and paramedics looked almost as excited as her parents.
“It’s amazing to watch every time; it doesn’t matter who’s it is,” said paramedic Marino Ridino, who has three children of his own.
Firefighters and paramedics are trained to assist with childbirth, but they rarely have to. Each year, Ventura County Fire Department personnel assist with only two or three births, said Robin Shedlosky, the agency’s clinical program coordinator.
Department dispatchers talk people through an average of two or three more births each year.
Those who help with a birth get a pin in the shape of a stork.
“It’s kind of like a badge of honor,” Shedlosky said.
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