Nee Naw

Monday I got to fulfil something which has been an ambition of mine since I started at the Nee Naw Service. I delivered my first baby! The location couldn’t have been better — the unfortunate mother to be had been caught short in the toilets of The Slug and Lettuce in Romford. (Funnily enough, I went to that very pub a couple of years ago, and the toilets were very glamorous…). An ambulance had been called for already, but it sounded at that point like the baby had a while to wait before making her entrance, but the barmaid rang back in a panic to say that she seemed in rather a hurry. I’ve heard this all before, so ask the barmaid to perform the dubious task of looking between the mother to be’s legs. What I haven’t heard before is “I can see the head!!” It was all systems go from that point, and the lucky barmaid was given the night off from pint pulling to deliver the baby with me shouting instructions down the phone. Fortunately, it was a straightforward birth - head first, cord not around neck, and I was amazed at how little time it took between the head appearing and the rest of it being out. The few seconds in which the barmaid was wiping some nasty stuff out of the baby’s mouth to start her breathing by herself seemed to take forever, and then there was a resounding WAAAAAH!, and it was just like TV. Then the ambulance crew walked in, right on cue, so I didn’t have to faff around with cords or afterbirths, which is a good thing.

An article later appeared in the Romford gazette where the barmaid was quoted as saying “I rang for an ambulance, but they told me they were very busy and couldn’t get an ambulance there for half an hour, so I hung up and took charge of the situation myself”. My dreams of being featured in said local rag or even having the baby named after me (okay, so it was a girl, but how about Marcia?) were shattered. Still, I suppose “Barmaid delivers baby” is a better headline than “Ambulance dispatcher does job properly”, and anyway, anyone who is anyone has been misrepresented by the press at some time in their life.