Firefighter Delivers His Son in Calif. Parking Lot

Dec. 08--FELTON -- Michelle Missman knew her baby would be wasting no time coming into the world Monday morning when she was only a mile away from home.

The 8-pound baby Lucas Missman came into the world at 3:34 a.m., while his mother stood outside her car in a sheriff's substation parking lot on Graham Hill Road and his father played catcher.

"Everything happened so fast. We got in the car and made it 2 miles down the road and I said, 'You'd better pull over, this baby's coming.' He really left us no time," said Michelle Missman, 31, from her maternity ward hospital bed. "My husband literally delivered him. And a minute or so later the sheriffs came out and very shortly thereafter Felton Fire showed up and AMR responded. Then it was all hands on deck."

Not long after leaving home, 38-year-old husband Charlie Missman, a deputy fire marshal at the Presidio in San Francisco, was at the wheel, keeping his wife calm and calling 911 to get an ambulance to meet them at the San Lorenzo Valley Sheriff's Service Office Service Center. The substation came to mind due to a paramedic internship he had undergone locally, Michelle Missman said.

Deputies and emergency responders at the scene of the birth were not immediately available for comment Monday.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart and Lt. Kelly Kent, the department's spokesman, stopped by to visit the new family later Monday morning. Kent said everyone appeared in good spirits.

"This is unique in itself," Kent said of the day's event. "We get some training, but we're no experts. We can do CPR and stuff like that, we're trained for that. But helping a woman give birth is a little unusual. I can't imagine it was a standard day for those deputies."

The family had a brief scare during labor when Lucas's umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck on the first push out, Michelle Missmansaid. By the second push, however, dad had slipped the cord over the baby's head and all was clear, she said.

Compared to her first son's birth, a very long labor, Michelle Missman said, this baby's birth "definitely took her by surprise." Everyone involved in Monday's birth was calm, professional and supportive, she said.

"I really didn't have time to panic," Missman said. "I was confident in my husband's skills and training enough that I was just focused on myself staying calm, because I was also in a little bit of shock."

Copyright 2015 - Santa Cruz Sentinel, Calif.