12-Year-Old Boy Delivers His Own Baby Brother

Here’s a story you don’t hear every day: A 12-year-old Vancouver Island boy helped deliver his new baby brother at home this past weekend. Gaelan Edwards was watching a movie at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning when his pregnant mother, Danielle Edwards, 30, woke up in labor. She shouted for her son, Gaelan, who came running in to find that the baby’s head was already showing (this might be worse than walking in on your parents having sex, no?).

Gaelan, unfazed, got right to work. “Everything is going to be okay,” he told his mother. According to The Globe and Mail, he pulled the baby out by the shoulders, grabbed a pair of scissors and a paper-bag clamp from the kitchen, then helped her push out her placenta and clamped and cut the umbilical cord (I can say with certainty that this is way more than I’d know how to do and I’m a mother of two!). He then wrapped his baby brother in a blanket before calling a friend of his mom’s. The whole thing lasted 20 minutes, the article goes on to say. (The baby’s father, Kendall Strong, does not live with the family.)

When asked where he gets these instincts, Gaelan told The Globe and Mail that he learned from reading medical books and watching hospital shows on TV. He says he hopes to be a doctor one day but also admitted the experience was “pretty gross.” “The room smelled funny and the baby was squishy. I washed my hands with an entire bar of soap.”

The baby, named Caynan, is the fifth child in the Edwards family. He was two days overdue and weighed a healthy 7 pounds 9 ounces.

Crazy story, right? What a quick-thinking kid. And one lucky mom.

(Photo: Photodisc)

Similar Posts