Minn. mother gave birth to child while she was home alone

WOODBURY - Their second meeting was much more relaxing.

A little more than two weeks after Woodbury emergency responders came to Marina Pariseau's aid after she gave birth to her third child alone at home, the grateful mom and her newborn met the medics who assisted them.

"Nice to see you again under better circumstances," a smiling Pariseau told paramedics Jason Arney-O'Neil and Val Huerta and emergency medical technician Russ Hawkinson.

"You did a great job that day," Arney-O'Neil told her when they met Monday.

The three medics, along with Woodbury police officer Joel Krenzel, helped Pariseau in the moments after a traumatic experience: home alone and days ahead of her due date, she delivered her own baby while standing in her bathroom.

Pariseau, 32, did not think the birth was near when she started her day May 20. She went to work at Malt-O-Meal as if it were any other day. At mid-day she felt nauseous. She went for a walk over lunch and returned to work. By mid-afternoon she felt worse, so left work early.

When she got to her Royal Oaks home, she took a bath and rested.

'I caught him'

The first contraction came at 3:23 p.m.

"And then the second one came at 3:27 p.m. and I thought, wow, that's not even five minutes apart," she recalled.

Pariseau felt a third contraction about four minutes later. On the fourth, she called her husband, Todd, and told him to leave work because she thought she was close to delivery. He left around 3:40 p.m.

After two more contractions, Pariseau walked upstairs to the bathroom, feeling like she did when she gave birth to her first two children.

Then, just minutes later, she could tell she was about to deliver her third. She wanted to call for help, but had left the phone in her bedroom. She decided she could not walk to the room; the baby would not wait.

"I just realized that he was going to come out and I had to do whatever I had to do to get him out," she said. "It's a hard thing because you don't know what to do when the baby comes out."

She has no formal medical training.

"I kept thinking, what if the (umbilical) cord is wrapped around his neck? What if he is breach?" she recalled. "I just started pushing and thought I'm going to have to do this. I just stood in place, kind of squatted ... and he came out."

It was her second son.

"I caught him," she said. "I did kind of a football hold. I just kind of held him between my legs."

She swiped his mouth with her finger. He cried. She knew that was a good sign.

Thankful for care

Still worried and hysterical, she "squat-walked" to the bedroom and fumbled with the small buttons on her mobile phone as she dialed 911 and held her newborn.

An emergency dispatcher told her to wrap the baby in a towel.

"And then came the hard part: she asked me if my (front) door was unlocked, and I said, 'no,'" Pariseau said.

The dispatcher told her it would take paramedics longer to help if the door remained locked, so Pariseau carefully walked downstairs, still holding her newborn between her legs, and unlocked the door. She then walked back upstairs and waited in the bathroom.

Krenzel arrived first. The cop sat Pariseau on the toilet and wrapped the baby.

"You're just there to basically let them know (they're) OK," said Krenzel, who is retiring this summer after 31 years with the department. "It was a unique experience."

A few minutes later, the medics arrived.