oddly enough

March 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

oddly enough

Kids help mother with delivery in California

FREMONT, Calif.

When Alana Sanders gave birth to her fourth child, the people on hand to towel off the baby and tie its umbilical cord weren’t the usual team of doctors or nurses.

They were her 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son.

The Northern California woman unexpectedly went into labor at her home in Fremont and was forced to turn to Jabari, 9, and Faith, 11, after giving birth while standing in her bathroom.

“They didn’t freak out. They didn’t fight with each other,” Sanders, 36, said about her children.

A 911 recording released Wednesday attests to the children’s poise, as they relayed messages between their mother and a dispatcher March 9. Sanders’ husband, Geoffrey, had left about 1:30 a.m. for work and was not around.

“She’s starting to bleed,” Jabari says at one point in the recording posted on the Web site of KRON4.

His mother can then be heard screaming. “The baby’s already here,” he tells the dispatcher, as the baby begins to cry.

Faith then gets on the phone, and the dispatcher tells her to wipe the baby with a clean towel and tie, not cut, the umbilical cord with a string or shoelace about 6 inches from the baby’s body.

Alana Sanders and the newborn, Joseph, were taken to Saint Rose Hospital in Hayward. The boy, who weighed 9 pounds and 4 ounces, was healthy.