Meet the Hato Hone St John call handler who has delivered 19 babies over the phone

Hato Hone St John’s Gemma Cale with baby Leonard, John, Stella and Corné Fox. Photo / Supplied

When baby Leonard decided it was time to make his grand entrance into the world, no one was quite ready for it.

It was the middle of the night at the start of June and mum Corné Fox was only 37 weeks’ pregnant with her second child so assumed she had a bit more time. Baby Leonard had other ideas.

“My waters broke at 9pm but the contractions didn’t intensify until a few hours later,” Corné Fox recalled.

Husband John called the couple’s midwife, Nelly Felix, who instructed the Swanson couple to head to the hospital and she would meet them there. Things, however, were moving faster than expected. Baby Leonard was in a hurry.

“As soon as I started to get up to get my clothes on, I immediately knew I wasn’t going to make it,” Corné recalled.

At 1.50am, the couple called 111 for an ambulance. On the other end of the line, inside the Integrated Operations Centre in Auckland, Gemma Cale answered the phone.

Cale said she “could hear in the background that the mother sounded pretty close to delivering” so decided to triage them and bring up the delivery instructions.

“John was fabulous. He was so calm and followed all my instructions,” the call handler recalled.

“We got to the point where the baby’s head was visible, but there hadn’t been much progress, so I gave a few more instructions (and encouragement) to try and get the little man out.

“With the ambulance crew nearly there and the midwife on her way, it was a race as to who was going to deliver this baby first.”

In their home in Swanson, John and Corné followed all of Gemma’s instructions.

“I remember John running around getting towels and then doing everything Gemma told him to do,” Corné said.

When Cale told them the dad-to-be would need to “catch” his son, the penny dropped that they really were the ones delivering their baby.

“That’s when in my mind I knew I would be delivering him, and I started thinking about ‘what if he was stuck, would I have to pull him out?’.

“But Gemma was so clear and said I needed to make sure I was holding his head and let my wife push him out. I just kept listening to what she was telling me and following her instructions.”

Leonard John Fox made his grand, unexpected, entrance into the world at 2.13am, a healthy 3.7kg boy.

The ambulance arrived 49 seconds later, taking mum and baby to the Waitākere Hospital emergency room to get them checked.

In a room next door, Leonard’s big sister, 2-year-old Stella, slept soundly through the whole delivery. A friend of the couple arrived just before the birth to babysit her.

She may have slept through all the commotion but as soon as she met her baby brother the following day, Stella was smitten.

“She adores him and has introduced him to all her teddies,” her dad said.

Gemma Cale, the ‘baby magnet’

Leonard was the Fox family’s second child and he was Gemma Cale’s 19th delivery over the phone - an impressive number that has earned her the nickname of “baby magnet” at Hato Hone St John.

Based at the Integrated Operations Centre in Auckland, Cale is a proud member of the Hato Hone St John Stork Club - a special club is for those call handlers who have aided in the delivery of a baby over the phone.

Cale, 30, has worked for Hato Hone St John for almost 10 years.

She started off in Telecare monitoring medical alarms, then made the move into communications three years ago.

“I wanted to move from Telecare to call handling because I was feeling quite ineffective being the middleman and wanted to ‘do more’ to help people,” she said.

“I was also doing my paramedicine degree and felt comms would support my learning better. If I didn’t get into the paramedicine course my second preference was midwifery.”

Cale graduated from AUT last year with a Bachelor of Health Sciences - Paramedicine and has wasted no time, helping deliver a baby in her first week as an emergency call handler.

She has a special baby jar recording all the deliveries she handles.

“Blue beads are for boys, pink is for girls, purple is for those who I don’t know the sex of [because usually the parents are a bit stressed] and white is for those born sleeping,” she explained.

While each one is memorable and marked with a special bead in a jar, Gemma Cale had not seen any of the babies she has helped delivered, until baby Leonard.

Once they settled back at home as a family of four, John and Corné decided to get in touch with Gemma to thank her for helping them deliver their baby boy. In an email to the call handler, they included photos of Leonard.

“I got some lovely photos of them all - which is a first for me.

“I have never seen any of the babies that I have helped deliver before, so their email really made my day… and moved me to tears,” she said.

At the start of July, Cale got to meet baby Leonard and the family she helped grow - a moment she said has definitely marked her.

Gemma with baby Leonard Fox, aged four weeks. Photo / Supplied

“Most of the calls that come into our centre are not happy ones. A lot of the time we are with someone in their last minutes on Earth. To be there in someone’s first minutes of life is really special,” Cale said.

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