Ross Valley firefighters had just received a refresher course in how to deliver a baby, when, real life kicked in.
But this time, the baby delivery wasn't a simulated session in a classroom. It was a real infant delivered in a car pulled over to the side of the road.
"It wasn't an ideal scenario," Capt. Mark Weston, the baby deliverer, said Tuesday in a phone interview. "But it was just one of those things that we do."
It began as a typical training day at the Ross Valley firehouse on Monday in San Anselmo. A Marin County doctor, Mark Bason-Mitchell, was teaching the team about childbirth and obstetrics. At 7:40 p.m., Engine 19 was dispatched to an "imminent childbirth" on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard not far from downtown San Anselmo.
A police offfcer yelled for help.
Weston, who has delivered babies before, jumped right in, assisting the mother deliver what appeared to be a healthy baby boy in the back of her Hyundai.
As soon as the umbilical cord was snipped, paramedics whisked mother and baby to Marin General Hospital.
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"It was pretty exciting," Weston said.
