The woman who has delivered 19 babies over the phone
Gemma Cale helped deliver a baby in her first week on the phones for Hato Hone St John. After ten years, she's earned the nickname "baby magnet".
Auckland mum Corné Fox was 37 weeks pregnant when her waters broke at 9pm. After calling her midwife and starting to get dressed, she knew she wasn't going to make it to the hospital.
At 1.50am Corné's husband John called 111. Working from the Integrated Operations Centre in Auckland that night was call handler Gemma Cale.
“I rang back to the family, and I could hear her labouring in the background, the noise, there's always like a shift in tone when someone's quite close to delivering," Cale told RNZ.
Gemma with baby Leonard Fox, aged four weeks.
Hato Hone St John
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That night, Cale helped deliver her 19th baby - Leonard Fox. After a decade with Hato Hone St John, that means the 30-year-old has one of the highest numbers in the "Stork Club" - a crew of call handlers who have aided in the delivery of a baby over the phone.
Leonard's dad, John, says he remembers Cale telling him he would need to “catch” his son.
“That’s when in my mind I knew I would be delivering him, and I started thinking about ‘what if he was stuck, would I have to pull him out?’.
“But Gemma was so clear and said I needed to make sure I was holding his head and let my wife push him out. I just kept listening to what she was telling me and following her instructions.”
A 2.13am Leonard was out, weighing 3.7kg.
A lot of people don't expect to give birth at home, Cale told RNZ, so it can be quite stressful. But it's one of her favourite parts of the job.
“Most of the calls that come into our centre are not happy ones. A lot of the time we are with someone in their last minutes on Earth. To be there in someone’s first minutes of life is really special.”
Cale graduated from AUT last year with a Bachelor of Health Sciences - paramedicine. She helped deliver a baby in her very first week as an emergency call handler. That’s when she decided to start a baby jar to record deliveries.
“Blue beads are for boys, pink is for girls, purple is for those who I don’t know the sex of [because usually the parents are a bit stressed] and white is for those born sleeping.”
While Cale gave John instructions over the phone, the couple's two-year-old daughter Stella slept in the next room.
“Stella didn’t even wake up with all the noise,” John laughed.
For the first time, Cale was sent photos of a baby she helped deliver. “I have never seen any of the babies that I have helped deliver before, so their email really made my day… and moved me to tears,” she said.
She then got to meet baby number 19, Leonard, due on 22 June.
“It was very emotional to meet him because a lot of the time we don't get to find out the outcome," she said.
“He was one of the few babies that I didn't actually get to hear cry. I was quite worried that he wasn't all right.”
Corné said: “I’m so happy Gemma could finally see one of the babies she delivered. We were so very thankful for her that Sunday morning."
