A 12-year-old Vancouver Island boy has gone from son to saviour after delivering his new baby brother at home this weekend.
Galan Edwards was by his mother Danielle's side for the past nine months as she waited for her fifth child to arrive, but neither of them could have predicted how quickly things escalated on Saturday morning.
"I didn't even realize I was in labour yet -- I just felt a lot of pressure. I was on my side and I rolled over onto my back," the Campbell River mother said.
She was in so much pain that she couldn't get out of bed or reach for the phone, so she called Galan for help.
"I was like, ‘This is not going to be a home baby,'" Danielle said.
But it was too late to get to the hospital. The contractions were coming fast and the baby's head was already showing.
"I said, ‘Galan, I need you to hang on to his shoulders and I need you to pull him out," she said.
The preteen says he relied on what he knew from watching deliveries on TV and what he could remember from his mom's medical books.
"The books have different ways of pulling a baby out, so I just tried to do the C-spine. I grabbed the shoulders ... I kept it balanced and pulled it out," Galan said.
"It started crying, so you know that's a healthy baby."
He knew exactly what to do next, too.
"I'm like, ‘Mom, I'm going to get a clamp and cut the cord,' so I went over there and found some scissors and a bag clamp and cut the cord," he said.
Danielle says it was her easiest birth. She and baby Kanine were taken to hospital for a check-up and all three are doing fine.
"One day when he's a father, he's going to look back on this and it's going to be something he remembers when his own children are born," she said.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger
