Security Guard Helps Deliver and Save Baby Outside Hospital After Umbilical Cord Was Wrapped 3 Times Around His Neck

An Oklahoma couple is thanking a quick-acting hospital security guard for helping to safely deliver their baby into the world.

Ashton Buchanan was just outside Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa when her water broke on Friday, Feb. 7, according to Fox affiliate KOKI-TV and NBC affiliate KJRH-TV.

Her husband Seth had pulled his truck into the facility’s circle drive, but the couple didn’t make it inside before they needed help.

“I kept telling him the baby's coming out,” Ashton told KOKI. “He was like, ‘Honey, that's impossible.’ I was like, ‘I’m not pushing, it's already pushing.’ ”

Seth quickly went to find a wheelchair and flagged down security guard Marricco Edmundson, who then saw that the baby had other plans.

“I could see the head coming out even faster, and this time I went to cradle the head, and as I cradled the head, the shoulders came out and the whole body just dropped in my hands,” Edmundson said.

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Edmundson, who is also a Tulsa firefighter and EMT, then noticed that the baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped three times around his neck.

“So I took my two fingers beneath the neck and umbilical cord and loosened the cord up, and after that the baby took a breath and started crying,” Edmundson said.

The hospital’s labor and delivery unit then took over, and the new family — including 7-lb., 5-oz. baby Theodore — was ushered inside the hospital.

Later, Edmundson reunited with the Buchanans in their hospital room and had a proper introduction to their new addition.

“He saved us this morning,” Seth said. “It was a godsend.”

Edmundson has actually delivered two other babies before, but he says this experience was different.

“This one here takes the cake,” he told KJRH. “Like I said, I wasn’t ready for this one and it caught me by surprise. But my training just kicked in and I did what I had to do to deliver a baby until staff arrived.”