Teachers and administrators across the country are still prepping for the first day of school: putting their classrooms in order, sitting in on meetings, and mentally bracing themselves for a new school year. Similarly, staff at a Texas elementary school were getting themselves ready for a new school year, but they had no idea that their staff was about to grow by one!
What started out as a typical school day turned out to be anything but when one of the school's staff went into labor. That would have been enough excitement, but then the baby had no patience to wait for first responders, forcing staff to help deliver the little one.
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It started out like a typical day.
Teachers and administrators at Cunningham Elementary School in Wichita Falls, Texas, showed up August 28 for what they believed would be a typical day at work. But then paraprofessional Paige Lockstedt, who was due to give birth to her second child in November, started feeling ill and went to the bathroom, according to the Abilene Reporter News.
No one could have anticipated what was going to happen next.
"Paige said she wasn’t feeling well, so I was trying to tell her to go home, and she started to walk to find [Principal] Simmons, and I was like, ‘No, I’ll find Simmons. You go home,'" LIFE teacher Ashley Strain told KFDX/KJTL. "She said, ‘Well, I’m going to go to the bathroom,’ and she called me and said, ‘My water just broke.'"
This began a race against the clock.
It quickly became clear the baby wasn't interested in waiting for help to arrive.
Strain and Principal Amy Simmons quickly put Lockstedt in a wheelchair and raced her to the school's main entrance to wait for emergency services personnel, but the baby had other plans. Simmons told the Reporter News that Lockstedt told her "'This baby is coming right now.'"
They hoped she was wrong. "And we’re, like, 'No-no-no, the baby can’t come right now!'" Simmons added.
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The women had no choice but to get the baby safely delivered.
It became clear to both Strain and Simmons that they were going to be delivering a baby right then and there.
"Mrs. Strain runs into the bathroom — and catches the baby. I grab paper towels, and we are holding a baby," Simmons told the newspaper.
"We don’t know exactly what time, but not long — maybe five or six minutes after we got the call that her water broke. So, it all happened very fast," :she said, per KFDX/KJTL.
"I held the baby, and Mrs. Strain started rubbing the baby’s chest, and the baby started whimpering," Simmons continued, via the Reporter News.
Then firefighters showed up. "A firefighter leaned over and said, ‘You have a baby.’ I said, I sure do!" she said.
All three women now have quite a story to tell.
Lockstedt's baby, a little girl named Isabella, was born 10 weeks early weighing 2 lbs., 9 oz. She will have to spend some time in the NICU, but overall, mom and baby are doing well.
Of the experience, Strain said, "it just feels surreal."
Simmons agreed. "Like, never in a million years did I ever think I would have to do that at school. And I did, and I’m just glad that they’re okay and that they’re healthy and that they’re well taken care of."
In a Facebook post, Strain joked that she and Simmons "can now add baby delivery to our resumes!"
