Bub all safe and sound despite speedy arrival
LITTLE Mason Mayo came into the world so suddenly he was curled up on his mum’s chest on the bathroom floor before his dad even had a chance to call for an ambulance.
Yesterday at Darwin Private Hospital, three-day-old Mason, mum Rebecca and dad Peter met face-to-face with St John Ambulance emergency dispatch operator Michael Muller.
Michael was working a rou- tine shift at the ambulance dispatch centre in Berrimah when Peter rang triple-0, and was the “cool calm and collected” voice at the end of the phone in the first minutes of Mason’s life in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
Mason’s due date was six days away and Rebecca had just called out to Peter from the shower to “ring the hospital and tell them we’re half an hour away”.
“The next thing I said was: ‘the baby is here’,” Rebecca said.
Peter said Rebecca pulled off “the catch of the year” before he rang for help and got through to Michael.
Michael said Mason’s birth was “fairly textbook if you can call it that”, other than taking his parents by surprise.
“I could hear a baby in the background, which is a good sign – nice healthy loud screams,” he said.
Moments later, Rebecca, Peter and Mason were joined in the bathroom by Mason’s two-year-old sister, Mahalia, who woke to see what all the fuss was about.
“The first thing she wanted to do was to hold him,” Peter said.
Michael stayed on the line with the proud parents until an ambulance crew arrived at the family’s house in Rosebery.
“It’s awesome to see them at hospital, happy and healthy,” Michael said.
“So often we hang up the phone and are left wondering what happened.”
Rebecca and Peter were full of praise for Michael, the ambulance crew, doctors, and nurses since Mason’s eventful birth and said they hoped to get the all-clear to take their son home by today.
“The next thing I said was: the baby is here” REBECCA MAYO