ADA COUNTY, Idaho — For 911 dispatchers, a stork pin is given to dispatchers who successfully help deliver a baby over the phone. And not every dispatcher picks up a call like this.
But for one Ada County Dispatcher, he seems to be the baby magnet.
Tim Simmonds has been a 911 dispatcher for over 30 years. He told KTVB he took the job after a military injury forced him to get a sit-down job.
"In 911 every time something happens, you just have to figure out how to roll with it until the help gets there," he said.
Dispatchers are the initial first responders when a 911 call comes in. They're delegating incident response and deciding what to do in various highly stressful situations.
"You go from zero to 110 instantly, and then back to zero with the reports," he said. "It's constantly back and forth. There's days you go home, and you're shaking from what you've been through. On a bad day, keep to myself and talk to the dog."
But not every day is a bad day. On June 7, Simmonds got to file it away in his memory bank.
"It was early in the morning," he said.
The voice behind the call was a Kuna area father.
"He said we're not going to make it to the hospital, were having a baby, and I think it's going to come right now," Simmonds said.
Simmonds got the EMT's started.
"I could hear his wife in the background. I could hear she was having contractions," Simmonds said.
He walked them through delivery protocols.
"Right here in section six, where it says, as you're delivering the baby, support the baby's head and shoulders and hold his hips and legs firmly and remember, the baby's going to be slippery... and I can tell you that's true... they're slippery. "
All of this happened before paramedics could get there.
"Right as that baby came out, and we heard a cry for the first time, he started to break down just a little bit, I could hear in his voice," Simmonds said about the father on the phone. "And then he came right back with me as I'm talking to him and I'm telling him 'Now tell your wife, she's doing a good job'. The firemen walk in, and they say 'okay, what's going on?' and he goes, 'well, we just had a baby' and I hear them say 'already?'"
This was the sixth baby Simmonds had delivered over the course of his dispatch career.
"These kinds of calls are like the highlight," Simmonds said. "They're amazing, when it all goes well... and you hear that baby cry at the end."
Before saying goodbye to the couple that day, Simmonds wanted to know one last thing.
"He told me it was a boy," Simmonds said. "And I said, 'Well, congratulations and tell your wife, I said congratulations.' I hit disconnect, and I'm just like, deep breath."
The six babies he's delivered over the phone are not the only times he's done this. Simmonds shared with us that he's actually been on the other side of the same situation.
He hand-delivered his daughter and her son, his grandson, too.
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