Dad Delivers Baby in Yard, Worries in 911 Call ‘I Might Pass Out’

A Michigan man warned an emergency dispatcher he’d called from his front yard Wednesday afternoon that he wasn’t “really good with this kind of stuff” and there was every possibility he might pass out.

Sam Stover, who lives in the Western Michigan hamlet of Byron Center, didn’t faint.

Now Mom, a baby girl whose birth in the new grass of spring may seed generations of family lore, and even her shaken Dad are doing fine, MLive reports.

The dramatic home birth happened after Jennifer Stover began having “extremely intense” contractions. Jennifer, whose due date is May 20, had been sent home from a nearby hospital after having labor pains earlier that morning.

“The baby’s coming now, I can feel it,” Jennifer told her husband that afternoon

Sam tried to get her to the car and to the hospital. But he quickly realized the baby was going to be born in the front yard of their home – on the spot where Jennifer fell to her knees as the baby’s head began to push out of the birth canal.

Dispatcher Jennifer Gort, who answered Sam’s 911 call, said he did a great job delivering his daughter, the couple’s third child, after he got over the initial panic. The dispatcher, a mom herself who is familiar with the pandemonium the sudden onset of labor can create, calmly talked him through what he needed to do to prepare for his baby’s birth.

He had to rip the shoelaces – “A shoestring? Holy cow” he wondered when Gort included that in the list of towels and other supplies she wanted him to gather – from his golf shoes, but assembled the emergency home birth kit as directed.

When he returned, Jennifer was screaming in pain on the lawn as he returned. Soon, with some help from a neighbor Sam had enlisted along the way, baby Stover made her appearance, her cries flooding her dad with relief.

“Everything went so fast,” but, he said, “I wouldn’t recommend anybody doing it this way.”