Davon can't wait for the day that his daughter gets to formally meet the two ladies who talked him through the delivery.
A pair of doulas helped guided a nervous father to deliver his own baby through Facebook after being stuck in the Buffalo snowstorm. Erica and Davon Thomas were expecting their first child on Christmas Day, but the baby decided to come a little early around 11 p.m. on December 23 when Erica’s contractions began. As she went into labor, no emergency service could reach their house as the winds reached 60 mph. The snow from the winter storm had also piled up about halfway up the front door of their Buffalo home.
“I started thinking, ‘Well, how is my baby going to get delivered safely?’” Davon told CNN. Little did he know that Facebook was going to be a huge factor in how things were going to unfold. He called a friend, Jeter Neville Jr., who helped make a post for the couple on a Buffalo Facebook group, asking for assistance. The post helped the couple connect with Raymonda Reynolds and Iva Michelle Blackburn, two doulas who contacted him to walk him through the delivery process. “It was straight tunnel vision,” Davon recalled. “I realized how important this was and all nerves went away.”
"Buffalo is called the City of Good Neighbors for a good reason," new dad Davon Thomas said following the unconventional birth of his daughter, Devynn. https://t.co/bYrmQBkeoj
— The Buffalo News (@TheBuffaloNews) December 26, 2022
Devynn Brielle Thomas, a healthy baby girl, was delivered by Erica without incident at 3:31 p.m. on December 24, weighing 6 pounds, 9 ounces, and measuring 20 inches long. “I couldn’t have done it without them,” Davon said, adding he and his wife were in shock. “It was very comforting knowing they were there.”
Parents deliver baby at home during Buffalo blizzard with help from doulas on video chat, then trek through knee-deep snow https://t.co/A8yMN2EICI pic.twitter.com/CQdIeyEph2
— CP24 (@CP24) December 29, 2022
Blackburn told NBC News, "We were using Facebook Messenger to communicate with [Devynn’s] parents and coached them through the delivery, so I watched her being delivered on my cellphone. I was in my living room with my mother and my kids while all this was happening. And when that baby started crying, we all started cheering. You would have thought the Bills made a touchdown." Davon can't wait for the day that his daughter gets to formally meet the two ladies who talked him through the delivery.
Two doulas helped a Buffalo mom and dad, who were trapped inside their home by a Christmas Eve blizzard, deliver their baby by talking them through the process via the phone. https://t.co/fZTMjFK50M
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 29, 2022
"We're all OK, thanks to them," Davon said. "As a matter of fact, we're all leaving the hospital in a couple of minutes. We're going home." The doulas too were not expecting such a call amid the blizzard. “I thought she was calling to check in, you know a girlfriend check-in because we were all trapped in our houses,” Blackburn said of Reynolds.
“It turned out to be something totally unexpected.” Social media “can be messy sometimes, but it can be life-saving and life-changing,” Reynolds added.
References:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/28/us/buffalo-baby-born-in-blizzard-doula-trnd/index.html
Cover Image Source: YouTube | WGRZ-TV
