Midwifery Past Midnight – Delivery Dad To The Rescue!

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When it’s 2 a.m. in the morning and your wife surprises you with the baby already halfway out of the womb, you’d find it’s too late to go to the hospital. So, what do you do? Well, you deliver the baby yourself! That was the case with 35-year-old businessman, husband, and father, Zamri Jamal Abdul Hakim on a very early Monday morning on 23 November 2020, at their home in Bandar Sri Damansara, Petaling Jaya.

The moment of a child’s birth is something very exciting and extraordinary to experience and witness. Sometimes it can be overwhelming not just for the mother who’s going through labour but for the father as well! One could only imagine Zamri’s case when his wife had to go to the bathroom as she was experiencing contractions. All of a sudden, his wife came out of the bathroom and said that the baby was about to be born. “(My) wife then said that the baby is going to come out now. When I looked, the baby’s head was already fully out. It was too late to go to the hospital by then”, he said in an interview with mStar.

Arriving at the hospital (image credits: Says.com)

Arriving at the hospital (image credits: Says.com)

The baby being taken into the hospital for a check-up (image credits: Says.com)

The baby being taken into the hospital for a check-up (image credits: Says.com)

According to Zamri, the baby was born after the second push, and it all happened in less than five minutes! Without panicking, he used a technique called ‘gentle birth’, a technique that enables a safe and comfortable childbirth that he learnt from a parenting class he was taking. Yet, apparently, this was not his first but his second time being a midwife! With his first child, it was at the hospital with doctors and nurses present giving advice. Zamri had planned to deliver his second child by himself based on what he learnt and practiced.

“…I had indeed planned to deliver this child myself. This is not the first time, but I didn’t expect to do it at home with just the two of us,” Zamri told mStar. “Fortunately our two-year-old child was sleeping in another room so the situation was much calmer…” According to Zamri, his wife had given birth to the baby weighing 3.1 kilograms and was about a week earlier than the due date which was supposed to be today, 1 December 2020.

In light of this situation, he says that it is important for married couples, especially for fathers-to-be, to study the pregnancy process to build their confidence so they can face such emergencies. Kudos to Zamri for doing an amazing job as a father in handling this unexpected situation so well!

Zamri with his wife and first child. (image credits: Says.com)

Zamri with his wife and first child. (image credits: Says.com)