By Elizabeth Wulfhorst
TINTON FALLS – Medical professionals often stress that parents should expect the unexpected when it comes to childbirth. For Maria Pollard and her husband Lee, unexpected was an understatement.
On Jan. 27, after enjoying dinner with their two children, Wesley, 5, and Lucia, 2, at Brothers Pizza in Red Bank, the family returned to their Society Hill home for a quiet evening. Maria was close to term with their third child and scheduled to be induced Jan. 31. But it turned out baby Cecilia wasn’t keen on waiting.
“I was induced with my other two children, so I didn’t really know what natural labor felt like,” explained Pollard. “I was having what felt just like Braxton Hicks contractions and I’ve been having them for months. So it didn’t really seem too alarming.”
However, once she and Lee put Wesley and Lucia to bed for the night and began straightening up the toy room, Pollard said the contractions returned, this time four minutes apart.
“So that was a little concerning,” she said.
Then her water broke. A quick call to the doctor confirmed what they already knew: they needed to get to the hospital. But within a few minutes the contractions were only a minute apart and Pollard felt the urge to push.
Lee dialed 911 as they waited for Maria’s sister to arrive to stay with the still sleeping kids.
Patrolwoman Deseree Johnson of the Tinton Falls Police Department responded to the call and was the first to arrive, shortly before the rest of her squad and EMS.
“I get there and she’s lying on the couch and she’s in pain,” Johnson said. “So I just start giving her some oxygen just to calm her down, just to help her with her breathing.”
Johnson is the only female on her squad and one of only three females in the department. She graduated from the police academy in 2019, started as a Class II police officer with Tinton Falls in September of that year and was hired fulltime this past August. In the borough, squads rotate every January, so the team – which includes Johnson, Sgt. John Tallarico, Cpl. James Sapia and Patrolman Brian Cahill – had only been working together a few short weeks when the Pollards’ call came in.
But that didn’t matter. While Johnson explained officers get minimal training at the academy on how to handle childbirth calls, she said the squad worked together in the moment to do what the situation required.
“We were able to see how each other can work without somebody instructing,” she said. “Sometimes things just happen. And you need people to just catch the pieces.”
Johnson and her squad quickly realized she was the only female at the scene besides Pollard and understood that could be “uncomfortable” for Maria.
The officers grabbed sheets and towels and moved Maria from the couch to the floor. Johnson was preparing herself for the inevitable – delivering the baby – when medics arrived.
“My squad gave her some privacy because, you know, it’s a lot,” Johnson said, but she thought, “Hey, I’m a girl. Let’s do this. It’s gonna happen. Let me be there for her.”
Which Maria said she was.
“She was by my side the whole time, helping me breathe, giving me oxygen, calming me down,” Maria said.
“The other officers who were here were all male and they were kind of a little bit like my husband, rushing around. So she was kind of like my calming factor,” Maria said of Johnson. “Lee and I are both so grateful to the officers and to the EMS. They got here so quickly.”
Tallarico’s squad helped Wesley’s mom deliver his new baby sister at home Jan. 27. Eduardo Pinzon
Maria said she was concerned about giving birth at home because her other babies were “big.” I was worried that there could be complications.”
But three pushes later, the Pollards welcomed 7 pound, 2 ounce Cecilia into the world.
EMS delivered Maria and Cecilia to Monmouth Medical Center where Maria’s very confused doctor was waiting for her. “He said he was rushing around the labor and delivery floor looking for me,” explained Maria, who is the director of development for the Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus Foundation. “It was nice to be around people who I knew” after the chaos of the delivery, she said.
And there was “a lot of chaos,” said Johnson, which is what led her to remain calm.
“I treated it like any other high anxiety call,” she said, working to control her own breathing so she could help Maria.
Maria’s sister arrived at the Pollards’ house in time to take a video of that chaos and ensuing birth and spent the night with Wesley and Lucia, who slept through the entire event.
Pollard said Wesley “had a lot of questions” the next day and was “very upset that he missed all of the police officers because he wants to be a police officer when he grows up.”
A month after the unexpected home birth – which was a first for everyone on the squad, including Tallarico who Johnson said has been a police officer for 20 years – Johnson, Tallarico, Sapia and Cahill returned to the Pollards’ home to meet the fruits of their – and Maria’s – labor. The Pollards thanked the officers with gold stork pins while the officers treated Wesley to a police officer experience, letting him sit in their car and meet a police dog.
Johnson said this was the first birth she’s witnessed and, in retrospect, watching the whole process hasn’t deterred her from having kids someday. “I think I can do it. But I just wouldn’t want my first one to be at home.”
And she’s pretty sure she “needs to get a dog first,” she joked.
The article originally appeared in the March 3 – 9, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
