When a pregnant Viola Fair was planning her newest child’s birth, going into early labor at home wasn’t what she had expected. But sometimes life throws you a new plot into your story. In late October, Fair felt contractions and knew she had little time. The baby was three weeks early and Fair couldn’t move, but knew what she had to do next.
She yelled for her daughter to call 911. And her 10-year-old daughter, Miracle Moore, came to the rescue. The fourth-grader came running and grabbed the phone to call 911. “Hi, I think my mom is in labor,” she said at the start of the recorded call, which was aired recently on the Today show.
The young girl connected with dispatcher Scott Stranghoener. He stayed on the phone with Miracle the entire time while she waited for EMTs to arrive. During the call, you can hear Fair in pain, yelling in the background.
Miracle told her mom to lay down, as Stranghoener asked, on either a bed or the floor. When her mom was having trouble doing that, he told Miracle to find blankets or towels for her mom to lay on, so she would be more comfortable.
The little girl juggled the dispatcher’s instructions with reassuring her mom, telling her “It’s OK, Mama, it’s OK!” Suddenly, Miracle tells Stranghoener, “I think her water broke!” “She’s coming, she’s coming,” Miracle yelled, urging her mom to lay down quickly. “She’s here! She’s poking out.”
The girl’s bravery stalled briefly when Stranghoener informed her that she would have to deliver the baby, while he instructed her over the phone. “Huh?”, she asked. However, Miracle remained calmed and followed the instructions.
Miracle kisses her sister, Jayla. Photo by KSDK5
“She’s out,” Miracle yelled. “She’s breathing and she’s crying now.” Stranghoener asked her to carefully wipe the baby’s mouth and nose clean. “Be very careful,” he said. “Don’t drop the baby, OK?”
The quick-thinking girl checked to make sure the umbilical cord was not around her new sister’s neck, before wrapping her snuggly in a towel, as she was told to by the dispatcher. When the EMTs arrived, she took them straight to her mom. Stranghoener, still on the phone with Miracle, told her that she did a “very good job.”
The paramedics took the infant to nearby Christian Hospital. “We just picked the baby up first thing, wrapped her in a blanket and yelled, ‘Happy Birthday,’” said paramedic Katie Barbero. “It was good.”
We love seeing good outcomes for families and stuff like that.”
The 911 dispatcher later told NBC news affiliate KSDK how impressed he was by Miracle. “I learned pretty quick that we had a serious situation,” Stranghoener explained. ‘We have a set of protocols that we follow, and she followed all of my instructions to a ‘T’ and did an amazing job.’
Fair named her new daughter Jayla. She also praised her oldest child. “It was definitely a miracle because once I had the baby, she came out, I couldn’t really grab her and pick her up and then Miracle came and she wrapped her up in a towel,” the mom recalled.
Viola Fair’s water broke suddenly at home, and her daughter, Jayla, was delivered by her oldest daughter, Miracle. Photo by KSDK5
“She wiped her off and rubbed her back a little bit so she could cry. So, she was really helpful. I am very thankful.” North County gave Miracle two awards for her bravery, and the young girl is already planning on a job in medicine. But for now, she is glad to be just a big sister. “She’s really cute. She doesn’t cry a lot, and I get to hold her a lot,” she said with a smile.
Sources: Daily Mail ⎸KSDK ⎸Today Show
