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A garda got off to an unusual start on his night shift in Connemara late last week when he ran into a couple in distress.
Garda Eric Carney was passing an unmanned Garda station in Letterfrack, Co Galway, on Thursday when he spotted a parked car.
Peter Gannon was on his way to Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar with his wife Kelly, when he was forced to enter.
“I stopped to check if everything was okay,” Garda Carney recalled yesterday.
“And there was a poor man on the phone to control the ambulance.
“They told me that the ambulance coming from Swinford, Co Mayo, would take 50 minutes.
“Then Peter phoned a paramedic, who was trying to give him instructions, but he couldn’t hear anything in the wind. So I picked up the phone and held it, while he followed the paramedic’s advice, and we both delivered the baby. “
The garda took a shoelace from Daddy Peter’s shoe to tie around the baby’s umbilical cord, and Kelly’s sister-in-law, Noeleen, arrived with clean towels.
“I myself have four children, so it is not something new for me, and I am trained in first aid at work,” he said.
Speaking yesterday on the way home from the hospital, Kelly Gannon described it as “all very fast.”
She and Peter are already parents to 22-month-old Cathal. They live near the town of Clifden, where her husband works with the state community organization Pobal.
The couple’s second child was three days late when Kelly went to check in at Castlebar hospital on Thursday afternoon.
“There were no signs of labor and they told me to go home and they would reserve me for an induction the following week,” she said.
“I started to feel a little weird around 3:00 pm that day.”
The couple were a bit late leaving the house as they arranged for little Cathal’s care and made sure the boy was settled in.
“We were on the road at 6.15 pm and at 6:20 pm my water broke. And that’s when we called 999, ”Kelly said.
“We pulled into the Letterfrack Garda station parking lot, but no one was there.
“We were so lucky that Garda Carney saw the car lights.”
When the ambulance arrived, the mother and baby, who weighed 7 pounds, 9 ounces, were taken to Castlebar..
Yesterday, tired but happy Kelly said: “We had chosen Cara’s name a couple of weeks before … but I never thought about shwould be born in a car. “
Online editors
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