911 Dispatcher Gains New Friends After Helping Deliver Baby

A frantic husband calls 911.

A calm dispatcher talks them through the miracle of birth.

A scenario that only happens on TV, right?

Wrong.

That was a real-life event in Johnston County recently. Wednesday, everyone involved met face-to-face for the first time.

The day of the delivery began as any other day for dispatcher Patsy Green, who has worked at the Johnston County 911 center for about a year.

"I hadn't been there that long when the original call came in," Green.

Jay Holder was on the line. His wife, Jo Ellen, was having a baby.

"Jo Ellen said that she had a lot of pain," Jay recalled, "that she had to push. She had to push."

Said Jo Ellen: "He saw the head, and he knew that I needed to have that baby."

After telling his wife to get on the bed and try not to push, Jay called 911.

"I knew that, more than likely, we were going to have a baby before the paramedics got there," Green said.

Said Joe Ellen: "He (Jay) realized when he was on the phone with Patsy. She told him that she was going to help him deliver the baby, and it wasn't going to be a paramedic that was going to make it in time."

"I was very scared," Jay said.

Green said Jay handled the situation well:

"I believe that if I would have been on the other end of the call," she said, "I would have been more nervous than he was."

Jay said he couldn't have gotten any better support or help.

"Thank God, it was Patsy on the phone," he said.

Said Green: "From what I know, from what I heard, it sounded like the birth went pretty well."

Jo Ellen said she was in disbelief at how the event turned out.

"Just actual disbelief that we had this baby in our bed," she said. "That was rather shocking."

Green said that, once the call ended, she didn't think she'd speak to Jay Holder again.

"Normally, when you send rescue, when rescue picks them up and takes them to the hospital, that's the last you hear," she said.

That was before Wednesday, when Green met little David Conway Holder.

"Here's what you coached us through," Jay said to her, showing her his son. "Would you like to hold him?"

"She helped us deliver him," Jay said later. "That is a special moment and a special bond that we'll have with her forever.

"We just praise God that we're able to be here and have somebody like that help us through it."