WILMINGTON, MASS. (WHDH) - It was a sweet reunion in Wilmington. A family caught up with the police officers who helped deliver their baby.
Tatiana Topala said she started having contractions at her home on Lowell Street just before 2 a.m.
Topala and her husband got up, got dressed, and got their toddler in the car to head to the hospital.
But the baby couldn’t wait!
“We live in a three-story building, so I knew that between contractions, my goal is to make it to another floor, make it to another floor,” Topala said. “I was ready to exit the house, and I felt a lot of pressure, and I understood that this is it.”
Her husband, Dennis Gotonaga, called the police.
“Things were going so fast,” Gotonaga said.
Luckily, an officer happened to be right around the corner.
“I was the first one there; I was doing traffic right down the street, so I showed up almost immediately,” Officer Jack Rooney said.
Rooney graduated from the police academy five months ago.
“When I got there, I was trying to remember exactly what I got trained for, because we spent, like, maybe 10 minutes at the academy going over it, and I was like, ‘Oh, that will never happen to me,” Rooney said jokingly.
Rooney’s first time holding a baby was a few minutes later when he helped deliver a healthy baby, named Oliver, on the bathroom floor.
Other first responders arrived to help the family get to the hospital.
“When the head came out, the umbilical cord was around the neck, then [another officer] arrived, luckily,” Rooney said. “There’s a first time for everything, you know.”
“I felt secured, safe, so I’m really grateful that the police officers came, they were right around the corner, that this happened the way that it happened,” Topala said.
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