It was 5 a.m. on Thursday morning when Annie Breau started feeling contractions. Five hours later, she was giving birth to her second child on the floor of her daughter’s bedroom.
“I didn’t even know my water broke,” she said.
Breau’s mother-in-law, Margie Palubiski, was home at the time and called 911.
“I made a makeshift bed on the floor out of beach towels and that’s where she laid until they showed,” she said.
It took paramedics five minutes to arrive. Const. Kate Wagner of Waterloo Regional Police showed up too. Victor was born a few minutes later, about 17 minutes earlier than anticipated.
Breau was supposed to be at the hospital that morning for an induced labour.
“I was making a joke about it the night before…and of course, the next day, he was here,” she said.
Waterloo Region paramedics have delivered six babies between January and March of this year. The entire team underwent training on emergency child birth about a year ago.
Primary care paramedic Amy Rivers calls it “a real privilege and honour” to be part of a birth.
“So often we’re called on a person’s worst day of their life. They’re sick or they’re injured and this is our opportunity to be there on the best day of their life,” she said.
Breau says she’s thankful for the role paramedics and police played. Meanwhile, baby Victor is none the wiser of his unexpected arrival and already sleeping five hours at a time.
With reporting by Stu Gooden
