In the early hours of Father’s Day last year, 911 dispatcher Stephanie Brito in Henry County, Georgia, received a call about a woman in labor at a gas station. Initially, Brito thought it would be a routine call where she would help manage contractions until the ambulance arrived. But when the store employee informed her that the baby’s head was visible, Brito realized it was an emergency delivery situation.
Working with the gas station employee, Brito helped the pregnant woman find a private space in the store’s cooler section for the delivery. About 15 minutes later, the mom gave birth to a healthy baby boy while standing up. Brito describes hearing the baby’s first cry as a surreal moment, marking her first experience assisting with a birth over the phone. Shortly after, paramedics arrived and transported the mother and baby to the hospital.
After baby David was checked out at the hospital, his father, David Dalrymple, reached out to his sister, Atlanta emergency room nurse April Sweatman. Dalrymple told her that neither he nor his girlfriend, the baby’s mother, were in a position to raise a child and without hesitation Sweatman agreed that she and her husband Charles would raise little David. Now 13 months old, Sweatman says that despite David’s “tough start” to his life, “he’s conquered it all.’ And she adds, “He’s absolutely amazing.”