Army Medic Delivers Daughter on Living Room Floor

911 dispatcher guides dad through delivery

Giving birth is tough enough, but imagine doing it on the floor of your house at the hands of your husband with the consultation of a 911 dispatcher over the phone.

About five weeks ago, Michael and Naomi Kaplan were sent home from the hospital without a new bundle of joy, having been told Naomi wasn't quite ready to give birth. A few hours later, she was.

"We go out to the car and my wife's like, 'I can't make it,'" Michael Kaplan said. "I'm like, 'Yes you can,' and she's like, 'No I can't. We have to call an ambulance.'"

Even an ambulance wasn't going to cut it.

"Halfway through the call, I could start to hear that she was really going to have this baby," 911 dispatcher Troy Nolan said.

"We then proceeded to deliver the baby at the house, because we just had no other option," Michael Kaplan said.

He made sure he was wife was comfortably seated on their 2-year-old son Skylar's play mat and surrounded her with pillows. He then followed the dispatcher's instructions and delivered his daughter, Sadie.

"The moment I heard the baby cry, I knew everything was OK at that point," Nolan said.

"That, of course, is the moment where you know it's all OK and worth it," Naomi Kaplan said.

Didn't hurt that Michael Kaplan is a doctor, albeit an allergist.

Dr. Kaplan will have to watch much of his daughter's first year via Skype. Since her birth, he's been deployed to Afghanistan as a U.S. Army medic. He'll be there until at least next summer.

"It's going to be hard for everybody, I think," the proud father said.

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