Photo: Courtesy Davon Thomas
In an interview withGood Morning America, Davon Thomas said he was having trouble on Saturday trying to find ways to get emergency services to come to their house due to the snowstorm after his wife Erica Thomas began going into labor the night before.
After listening to Thomas' concern about his situation with his wife, Reynolds contacted her friend, another doula named Iva Blackburn to provide more support before getting her to join the video call.
“I was home with my mom and my children, and we were watching the [Buffalo] Bills game in the middle of the storm,” Blackburn — who’s also a licensed practical nurse and a midwifery assistant — tells PEOPLE, adding that she thought her friend just wanted to check in when she saw Reynolds' call.
“When I answered, her and Davon appeared on the screen. She was just like, ‘Hey, I have this dad here. His wife is in labor. They’ve called emergency services, they can’t get to him. We need your help,'” Blackburn recalls. “He was on the phone, so I just basically said, ‘Let me see what mom looks like,’ because with my experience, based on how mom sounds and what she’s wearing, I can kind of tell where she is in the labor process.”
Courtesy of Shaw Photography
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Blackburn instructed Thomas to gather towels or blankets, to grab a flashlight and a bowl and to put some water on the stove.
Courtesy Davon Thomas
“He was nervous, but he listened,” says Blackburn, who then told Davon: “You’re just going to follow her around the house, because the best thing that a woman in labor can do is you just let her be. Let her walk around, let her just do what she needs to do.”
Meanwhile, Reynolds offered Erica some comforting words, telling her, according toGMA, “You can do this. It’s going to be okay. You know, we’ve been doing this since the beginning of time. Your body knows what to do. We just have to listen to your body.”
Blackburn tells PEOPLE she was proud of the new parents for how they handled their first birth given the circumstances.
“With a very unplanned home birth in the middle of a blizzard … they absolutely did amazing,” she says. “Mom listened, dad listened. They did amazing. They were calm. Nervous, but calm.”
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“He wasn’t able to get all the way to my house. So what he did was he parked his truck about three streets away from where I live at, and then his friend came to my house and helped me get my wife and the newborn to his vehicle,” Thomas said. “We literally had to walk through mountains of snow. It was like something out of a movie.”
The family of three returned home safely on Tuesday without enduring any health-related issues,GMAreported.
Reflecting on the experience, Reynolds said, “We both gave them [the parents] the biggest props. We were so proud of them because they did such a great job.”
Added Blackburn, “They did absolutely amazing, to be first-time parents to have an unplanned, out-of-hospital birth.”
source: people.com
