By DEANNA BOYD
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
Copyright 2006 Fort Worth Star-Telegram
PARKER COUNTY, Texas — It was 2:40 a.m. when the ringing of Cary Patterson’s cellphone jostled him from his sleep at Fire Station No. 1 in downtown Fort Worth.
“Something’s not right,” Sheila Patterson — almost 35 weeks pregnant with twins — calmly told her husband from the other end of the line. “I need you to come home.”
Cary Patterson put his bedroll away and awoke his captain to report that he was leaving. He was locking the gate behind him — 10 minutes after his wife’s first call — when the phone rang again.
This time, Sheila’s tone was more emphatic.
“You have got to get home. You’ve got to hurry.”
The unyielding stomach cramp that had roused her from her sleep shortly after 2:30 a.m. June 25 was now unmistakably full-blown contractions.
“Find your shoes,” Sheila urged her 2-year-old daughter, Abigael. “It’s time to go to the hospital. Your baby brothers are on their way.”
She had no idea just how soon they would come.
Early arrival
Cary Patterson, 35, maneuvered his car onto Texas 199 toward his home between Azle and Weatherford in unincorporated Parker County, keeping a careful eye on his speedometer as he spotted police officer after police officer patrolling the streets.
Back at home, Sheila, 33, made more phone calls. First to her sister Shari McDonald, who was to join the couple in the delivery room. Then to Stephanie George, the wife of one of Cary’s fellow firefighters, who had offered to keep an eye on Abigael at the hospital.
At 3:15 a.m., Cary finally walked in the door.
“Let me make one last bathroom run,” Sheila told her husband. A 20-minute ride to Baylor Medical Center at Southwest Fort Worth still loomed.
Seconds later, he heard his wife scream.
Twin A — later named Forbes Christian Ray Patterson — had arrived.
“I turned around and it was like ‘You need to lay down.’” Cary said. “Christian was coming out before we even got her all the way down. By the time I got her on the ground, Christian was out.”
As Sheila lay on the bare tile floor in front of the bathtub, Cary quickly checked over Christian, wrapping his firstborn son in the closest towel he could find and then placing the 5-pound, 10-ounce crying baby on his wife’s stomach as he had been trained.
“This was my first live birth,” Cary said. “It’s not one of those skills that we use every day in the Fire Department.”
He called 911, leaving his wife’s side briefly to get a bulb syringe to clean out the baby’s airways.
“We delivered one child. We’re expecting twins,” Cary told dispatchers. “We need an ambulance out here.”
A few feet away, a wide-eyed Abigael stood watching, clutching one pink shoe.
“She was standing in the doorway holding one of her shoes, and she said, ‘Baaaayyyyybeeee,’” Sheila said. “I’ll never forget that. She just stood there watching.”
Second son
Unaware that Cary is an emergency medical technician, the dispatchers cautioned him to wait for the ambulance to arrive before cutting Christian’s umbilical cord — a task that can prove fatal if not done correctly.
So he waited, one thought dominating his mind.
“The whole time I’m thinking, ‘Well, I’ve got about 15 minutes,’” he said. “I’ve got about 15, 20 minutes before the next one, at least that’s what the book says that we’ve read. I was praying the ambulance would get there before the next one came.”
At 3:33 a.m., 15 minutes after his older brother was born, Twin B — later named Colton Ray Murphy Patterson — decided it was his time.
“We’re about to deliver the second,” Cary told dispatchers. “I’m going to set the phone down.”
But as the second birth began, he spotted something that sent his heart racing.
“Colton starts coming and the first thing I see — of all the luck — is a foot,” Cary said. “Sometimes with breech, there’s not complications at all, but a lot of times you could have complications. The cord can get wrapped up in a leg, in an arm. I’m thinking the worst.”
The foot was followed by Colton’s rear end. “I don’t see any cord, so that’s a good thing,” Cary said. “He comes out three-fourths of the way, then kind of gets stuck or wedged.”
Cary applied gentle pressure to Colton’s lower body, turning the baby ever so slightly and breathing a sigh of relief when the 4-pound, 13-ounce boy slid right out.
Like he had done to his firstborn son, Cary suctioned Colton’s airways, then dried and gently wrapped his small body in a towel. He then placed both babies on the floor alongside their mother — level with her heart — to help blood flow through the umbilical cords.
“So now I’m sitting here,” Cary said. “We’ve got two babies, two cords. I’m doing my best to keep them warm.”
Help arrives
When emergency responders arrived about 10 minutes later, they were greeted by quite a sight.
In addition to the recently expanded family, blood and water covered the bathroom floor, something that Cary had to assure his wife was normal.
“Poor Sheila. She’s probably looking at it thinking she’s about to die,” Cary said. “It wasn’t a shock to me because I know there’s going to be a lot. At one point, she asked me, ‘Is this something we should be concerned about?’ I said, ‘You’re going to be OK, I promise.’”
The first to arrive at the home was a firefighter with the Silver Creek Volunteer Fire Department.
“He took Abigael out and kind of entertained her because the ambulance was right behind him,” Cary said.
When the two LifeCare paramedics from Willow Park arrived shortly thereafter, Cary quickly updated them on what had occurred.
The paramedics cut the babies’ cords, suctioned each child again and placed them in special blankets.
“We’re just glad [the paramedics] stayed after they walked in and saw everything,” Sheila said, laughing. “We’re glad they didn’t take one look and say, ‘Sorry, we can’t help you.’”
The whole family was loaded into the ambulance for the trip to the hospital.
There, Sheila, who still hadn’t delivered the afterbirth, continued to have contractions.
She could not have pain medication until her doctor arrived to decide whether she needed surgery. Upset, Sheila attempted to answer the nurses’ questions as she looked around wildly for her husband.
“Cary is nowhere,” Sheila said. “I look over, and Cary is sitting clear in the back of the room in the corner!”
Cary admitted that he was in a fog from the ordeal, but he laughs as he insists that his wife is slightly exaggerating.
“I was three feet from her,” Cary interjected. “I was three feet from her.”
Safe at home
Christian, who had some respiratory problems, was transferred to Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, where he remained for eight days before returning home to join his family.
Sheila and Colton, who was treated for jaundice, were released from Baylor the day after the births.
The babies, both doing well, will turn 1 month old today. A preliminary test revealed that the twins are likely fraternal, the couple said.
On a recent morning, Sheila and Cary recounted the story of their sons’ birth in tag-team fashion as they paced through their living room and kitchen, each cradling a feeding baby. As they talk, Abigael meanders around their legs, clutching her own pink-clad baby doll — albeit upside down.
The couple laugh as they relive all the things that didn’t seem so funny at the time.
Sheila jokes with her husband for taking his sweet time to get home.
Cary gently chides her for not fulfilling his one request to wait to give birth until after he had taken a test for a promotion at work.
Despite his wife’s accolades for having delivered their sons, Cary downplayed his role.
“It wouldn’t have mattered who was in there, if anybody,” he said. “Women have been having babies for hundreds, thousands of years.
“She did all the work. I showed up and just kept her from completely losing it. That’s all I did. Anybody could have done that.”