At 4:06 a.m. on April 17, Cortez dispatcher Marissa Hurst picked up a 911 call.<\/p>\n
\u201c911, what\u2019s you emergency?\u201d Hurst asked the caller.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m having a baby,\u201d the caller quickly said. \u201cAnd it is coming right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The caller was at a local motel, and he quickly explained that his wife had been having contractions all day but was sent home because her labor was not progressing, according to a 911 recording.<\/p>\n
Hurst quickly dispatched medics and the fire department to the Cortez Econo Lodge on Main Street.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are on the way,\u201d Hurst stated, after pausing to call medics.<\/p>\n
\u201cSir, are you ready to deliver the baby if needed?\u201d<\/p>\n
The male voice answers in a distressed voice, \u201cI don\u2019t know how, I don\u2019t know what I am doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hurst, did her best to calm him down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll give you some instructions. I\u2019ll tell you what to do, OK?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK,\u201d the man said on the other line.<\/p>\n
It is a call that Hurst, a dispatcher for a year, thinks about several weeks later.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got the call, I knew right away that I had to get the ambulance and fire department there as soon as possible,\u201d Hurst said.<\/p>\n
Hurst, a mother of a 20-month-old and a 7-year-old, also knew she had to calm the father of the baby down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew the best thing for the mother was to have a calm father,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Hurst then prepared the father to deliver the baby.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe prepared. If that baby starts coming, you need to have those towels ready,\u201d Hurst told the caller.<\/p>\n
Hurst continued to prepare the father to deliver the baby and had the mother concentrate on breathing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to stay on the phone with you until they are up in the room with her OK,\u201d Hurst told the caller.<\/p>\n
The call lasted seven minutes.<\/p>\n
Once the medics arrived, the father was relieved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to let you go. You\u2019re doing a great job and congratulations,\u201d Hurst said right before hanging up.<\/p>\n
Hurst said her training kicked in quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe calmer the dispatcher is, the better the situation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When the call ended, Hurst continued to monitor the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard them say, \u2018Transporting two,\u2019 and I knew she had the baby,\u201d Hurst said.<\/p>\n
The woman had the baby with the help of medics in the motel room about 25 minutes after the medics arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cI figured she wasn\u2019t going to make it to the hospital,\u201d Hurst said.<\/p>\n
To this day, however, Hurst doesn\u2019t know who she helped out that early morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t event know if it was a boy or girl,\u201d Hurst said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
two knew she had to keep caller calm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-112622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112622"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=112622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}