One-month-old Mia Lowery’s visit to the fire station on Saturday wasn’t her first.
In the early hours of Dec. 21, Mia was born in the bay of Puget Sound Fire Station 77 on Kent’s East Hill.
Mia’s parents, Nick and Kelley Lowery, brought Mia and her 3-year-old brother, Noah, by Fire Station 71 in downtown Kent on Saturday to visit and thank the firefighters who delivered her.
Nick and Kelley were on the way to Valley Medical Center in Renton from their East Hill home around 4 a.m., when they realized they wouldn’t make it the hospital.
“We had passed about where Kentridge (High School) is and I knew (the contractions) were getting pretty bad …,” Nick said. “At that point, we had to make the decision: ‘Do we turn around or do we try to make it?’ Usually both of us are very indecisive but (Kelley) was very decisive and said let’s turn around. I flipped a U-turn as fast as I could.”
Once they arrived at the fire station a few blocks away, Nick rang the door bell.
“I was just hoping that somebody was there,” Nick said.
Capt. Guy Thompson answered the door.
“For us, it was kind of surreal because you were so calm at the door,” Thompson recounted to Nick. “We had people dropping off toys for (the) Toys for Joy (drive) at all hours of the day and night. I am looking at the clock and thinking that is kind of early to drop toys off but maybe they’re going to work.”
When Nick explained Kelly was in labor in the car, Thompson and his crew jumped into action.
“I told Nick, ‘Get back in your car and drive around to the front of the station. I am going to open up the bay door. You drive your car right into the bay,’ ” Thompson said. “I didn’t want to have the baby in the car in the cold, in the rain, if we could help it. … (Nick) drove the car through. I opened the (car) door. I looked at (Kelley) and she was obviously going to have a baby really quick.”
Thompson got Kelley out of the car and on to blankets they had placed on the bay floor.
“She started having another contraction,” Thompson said. “I said, ‘Go ahead and push,’ and I had a baby just like that in my hands.”
Mia was born about 5½ or 6 minutes after Nick and Kelley arrived at the fire station, Thompson said.
Firefighters checked out Mia, and Kelley and waited for medics to arrive.
“(We) had the father come over and cut the umbilical cord and loaded (Kelley and Mia) up in the ambulance and off they went to the hospital,” Thompson said. “As we were loading them up I said, ‘If you get an opportunity, come on back,’ ” Thompson said. “I called them at the hospital the next day to check and see if the birth had gone OK.”
Firefighter Kevin Price, who helped delivered Mia, said the birth was “textbook.”
“You could open up an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) textbook and the birth that is described is very similar to what happened,” he said.
Price, who has worked for the fire department for three years, helped midwives deliver his own child, but this was his first birth on the job.
“Since they knew I was firefighter they let me deliver, but that is very different than in the field,” Price said of his child’s birth.
Mia’s birth was Thompson’s sixth delivery in his 30 years with the department, but his first at the fire station. He said of the previous five, one was in a car, the others were at residences.
Firefighter Cameron de Mestre also helped deliver Mia but wasn’t at Saturday’s reunion.
Kyle Ohashi, a spokesman for Puget Sound Fire (previously the Kent Regional Fire Authority), said it is exciting when firefighters deliver a baby.
“It is not the most common thing we do, but one of really the coolest things we do,” he said.
Kelley said she had a quick birth with her first child, but not as fast as Mia’s.
“We made it to he hospital that time,” said Kelley, who works as an instructional facilitator for the Renton School District and spent 12 years prior as a classroom teacher at Kennydale Elementary.
Kelley said she is grateful Mia’s birth turned out as well as it did.
“I am glad we made it to the fire station,” she said.
“So are we,” Thompson added,” “But, we will come to your house.”
Nick often drives by the fire station on his way to work in downtown Renton.
“It is one of those things I have obviously known is there,” he said. “Now, I look at it a little differently.”
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From left, Puget Sound Fire firefighter Kevin Price, Nick Lowery, 3-year-old Noah Lowery, 1-month-old Mia Lowery, Kelley Lowery and Capt. Guy Thompson. On Saturday, the Lowery family visited Price and Thompson, who helped delivered Mia at Fire Station 77 on Dec. 21. HEIDI SANDERS, Kent Reporter
