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‘My Water Broke’: How A 911 Dispatcher Helped A Woman Who Was About To Deliver A Baby
Along with special training, life experience and empathy helps 911 dispatchers do their jobs, as seen on "911 Crisis Center."
Life and death situations are a daily reality for 911 dispatchers.
“I have someone that’s bleeding to death,” a woman cried. “I was trying to defend myself. He got cut with the knife. He’s laying on the floor in the living room.”
On “911 Crisis Center,” airing Saturdays at 9/8c on Oxygen, that alarming emergency call came into Chagrin Valley Dispatch. Dispatchers launched into a synchronized team effort.While one dispatcher sent first responders to the scene, another spoke with the caller. She learned that the woman was in her car with the knife and instructed the woman to throw it out the window.
“You cannot be armed with a knife,” the dispatcher explained.
Paramedics transported the victim to a trauma center, but he did not survive. The caller was detained and questioned. The case remains an open investigation.
For dispatcher Donna Majoros, a working mom helping to care for her elderly widowed father, a number of calls hit close to home. They reminded her that the support of friends like fellow dispatcher Melinda Pilat is invaluable.
One call was from a man whose 68-year-old father had fallen and needed help getting up. It turned out that the caller was Majoros’s brother — and the man who fell was her dad.
The incident was resolved and was not as serious as Majoros initially feared.
“The last time that my family called 911 it resulted in my mom never coming home,” she told producers.
Following her own family emergency, Majoros answered a call from a woman in her car in her driveway: “My water broke,” the woman said.
Majoros sent the rescue squad to the caller’s address as she gathered information. She determined that the woman was 32 and had given birth three previous times.
But childbirth comes with risks — even in a hospital, Majoros told producers.
“To deliver a child in a vehicle without any medical assistance whatsoever could be very dangerous,” she said.
To keep the caller calm while help was en route, Majoros guided the woman through her breathing and urged her to stay calm and not to push.
A mother of four, Majoros spoke gently and reassuringly with the woman, asking if her children were excited about the baby, for example.
Help arrived and the caller made it to the hospital, where her baby was delivered safely.
“It’s incredible moments like this that make my job worth it,” said Majoros.
Chagrin Valley dispatchers also defused a complex domestic dispute in which a gunshot was fired and helped a married couple who were choking after the husband bombed the house with insecticide.
To learn more about dispatchers and the work they do, watch “911 Crisis Center,” airing Saturdays at 9/8c on Oxygen or stream episodes here.
