The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Firefighters meet baby they helped save
On Christmas Eve, Washington, D.C., first responders got to see baby girl who survived, with their help, after being born premature.
WASHINGTON — The firefighter stared at the baby in the palm of her right hand.
Human beings shouldn’t be this small, thought Shamia Pardlow, nor this color: a sickish, pinkish gray. The baby weighed 1 pound, 16 ounces. Her fingers and toes clung together, fused by ribbons of translucent skin. She wasn’t supposed to be born, not for another four months.
But, in the back of the crowded, careening ambulance, there was no time to keep thinking about any of it — because the baby wasn’t breathing.
“So I just started,” said Pardlow, 24. “I just did it.”
Steadying herself as the ambulance rushed to George Washington University Hospital on March 19 — avoiding the eyes of terrified mother Cierra Duckett — Pardlow thought back to the firefighter training she’d completed two months before. She pressed her left index finger against her middle finger.
She touched her fingertips to the baby’s chest. She started pumping.
Nine months later, on Christmas Eve, Pardlow saw ZaNiyah again — now healthy and human-size — at a holiday celebration hosted in the Engine Co. 19 firehouse.
It was ZaNiyah’s first Christmas. It was also her first time meeting the six men and women of the District of Columbia fire department who saved her life.
On March 19, Duckett had stomach pains. At first, she blamed her lunch. Confident it would pass, she went with her boyfriend, Andre Peterson, to pick up the couple’s other children from school.
But soon Duckett’s discomfort reached a telltale crescendo. A veteran of three births, she could no longer ignore the truth.
Peterson pulled off the road and phoned 911. The dispatcher promised an ambulance, but ZaNiyah was already crowning. Desperate, Peterson sprinted to the middle of the street — and spotted the firetruck.
The Engine 19 crew was en route to a different medical emergency. Still, they couldn’t ignore the man shouting in the middle of traffic.
Engine 19 firefighters grasped the gravity of the situation almost immediately. They hailed an ambulance and loaded Duckett inside.
ZaNiyah was born still encased in the amniotic sac — and without a pulse. Pardlow’s quick CPR kept the little girl breathing for the duration of the drive to the hospital.
The baby remained in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for 100 days. A few months after ZaNiyah finally left the NICU, Duckett pulled out her phone and shot off a text to the firefighters.
“I wanted to see when my daughter would be able to meet the people who saved her,” Duckett said. “I think it’s important.”