"She wasn't breathing": Droylsden mum gives birth to 9lb baby in bath

New parents in Droylsden had to deliver their own baby last weekend as paramedics had not yet arrived.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, parents Shelby Lomax and Reece Burns faced an extraordinary task, having to deliver their 9lb 3oz baby in the bath at home due to paramedics not arriving in time to get Shelby to the hospital. This meant that Shelby had to give birth at home with no medical assistance, and Reece had to be guided by paramedics via phone on what to do.

Shelby talked us through the mornings ordeal, saying “I woke up on Saturday at about 6am, went for some breakfast and started getting cramps. The cramps were only mild and I could walk around so I carried on with tasks, putting a wash on and sorting the house out. I had to keep stopping though and breathing as the cramps were getting worse.”

Cramping is a common symptom of pregnancy within the first two trimesters and is more uncommon to happen in the third. But with that said, towards the end of the third trimester women do experience cramping as they go into labour, which can be mistaken for contractions. This was the situation Shelby found herself in at 7 that morning.

Shelbys cramping continued, until she had to tell partner Reece Burns about the pain. “I thought that it wouldn’t be labour and if it was I had hours. I ended up waking my partner up shouting in pain and he came downstairs and asked if we needed to go to the hospital. I said no and I went upstairs for a bath, as when I had my son they told me to have one and come down to the hospital afterwards.”

The warm water from the bath has been found to help ease the pains from early labour and can also slow down contractions in late-stage labour. This was what Shelby was thinking, but as Shelby was running it the pain was getting worse and worse.

Shelby continued saying “I had to get out as the pains were getting really bad, I phoned St. Mary’s and told them I was in labour, I told them that my partner would bring me down. That was at 7:25am. I then tried to get out of the bath and that was when my waters broke and I could feel her coming out. I shouted Reece and said he needs to catch her, so he phoned 999 and they talked him through guiding her out.”

The paramedics were on hand to help Reece deliver the baby correctly, and by 7:40 baby Casaiya had been born, a mere 15 minutes after the initial call to the paramedics.

But unfortunately, it was far from over for the tired couple.

“I asked Reece if she was ok, and he said she was fine. But she wasn’t, she was blue and not breathing. He said it to not panic me, and he asked the paramedic what to do. He said there was no room to be emotional. The advice given was to put his mouth over her nose and mouth and try and blow. There was nothing else in the house to clear her airways. Casaiya was three minutes old by the time the paramedics arrived.”

The paramedics then blue lighted Casaiya to the hospital with her dad, with Shelby staying behind. Casaiya was put into the neonatal intensive care unit on oxygen for between 24 and 36 hours.

On top of having to give birth with no medical help at hand, Casaiya was also born weighing 9lbs 3oz, which is a very large size for a baby and a size that only 8% of babies born in the world weigh at birth. Shelby told us “she was the biggest baby on the neonatal intensive care unit!”