At 4:15 a.m, Monday, two New Jersey State Troopers received the call: an expectant mother had gone into labour by the side of the road.
By 4:26 a.m., they were cradling the newborn baby they helped bring into the world.
And in that brief window, the dash cam on their cruiser captured a dramatic scene that could well have been lifted right out of a TV show or movie.
“This definitely made me look at this job in a different light,” Trooper Alex Muro said at a press conference Friday.
“I come into work sometimes just expecting to do certain things and this experience really just kind of put things into a different perspective.”
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New Jersey State Troopers Alex Muro and Arnaldo Mateo were nearing the end of their shift when they got a call that a pregnant woman, rushing with her husband to the hospital after her water broke, was going into labour on the side of the Garden State Parkway in Hillside, New Jersey.
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In the dash cam video, we see the officers leaning into the vehicle through the open side rear door, with the woman just out of sight lying in the back seat. True to form, the officers encourage the woman to “breathe” and “push” as the miracle of birth occurs on the side of this dark, quiet New Jersey freeway.
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“We gave her specific instructions to push and at that point we observed the baby’s head, so I cleared the airway, I turned the baby’s head to the side and she had to continue pushing, so that’s what we did,” Mateo said. “We just gave her instructions and the baby came out.”
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Perhaps the most touching moment in the video occurs as the troopers cradle the newborn baby, only moments after it arrives into the world.
“It’s a girl!” one of them shouts to the new mother.
Both troopers helped cut the umbilical cord before giving the baby to the mom. According to local media reports, both mother and child were taken to an area hospital and are in good health.
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