Mom Thought She Had Time — Then Holy Name EMTs Delivered Baby In Her Bedroom

By Cecilia Levine From Daily Voice

Avante Nicolls thought she still had time. 

Her due date wasn’t until Nov. 12 — but in the early hours of Saturday, Nov. 1, the 33-year-old Bergen County mom went into labor at home and ended up giving birth with the help of Holy Name Medical Center EMTs.

Her contractions began around 2 a.m., but Nicolls, who was expecting her third child, didn’t think it was active labor. 

“It felt like period cramping,” she said. “It didn’t feel as intense as it did with the other children in the hospital. In my mind, it was my body preparing me for the next week.”

Around 4 p.m., she got up to use the restroom — and everything changed.

“I had a sensation like gravity taking hold,” Nicolls said. “There’s a baby there and you don’t feel it throughout the pregnancy aside from kicks and flutters, but this feeling was like a boulder on your bladder — an immovable force only moved by contractions.”

Nicolls told her boyfriend, Dashawn Bobbitt, she needed to get ready to go to the hospital. “We were getting ready to go to the hospital and I just couldn’t do it,” she said. “I couldn’t walk anymore.”

Bobbitt asked when to call an ambulance, and Nicolls said immediately. Within two minutes, Holy Name’s EMT team — Noor Thair, Brianna Wargelin, Jeff Gunning, and Bill Sanders — arrived.

Police got there first but weren’t equipped to assist with the delivery, Nicolls said. By the time EMTs came through the door, she had already pushed twice.

“They were preparing for me to push the baby out, so I pushed two more times and that last push — he came flying,” she said.

Her boyfriend cut the cord as EMTs clamped it, then carried her down the stairs in a wheelchair to the gurney and into the ambulance. The couple’s 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son were kept entertained in the living room by police.

Nicolls gave birth to baby Hendrix Bobbitt.

She had received all her prenatal care through Holy Name and her “wonderful gyno,” Dr. Shonda Corbett, and had been checked just days earlier. “It didn’t inspire her to keep me in the hospital,” Nicolls said.

Reflecting on the experience, she said she has “a newfound respect for all emergency service workers.”

“It was amazing,” Nicolls said. “They were very caring. They were in my home, I was already uncomfortable and overwhelmed, so to still have them let me advocate for me and my boyfriend, and listen to our concerns, was crucial. From the minute they came in my door to the minute they dropped me at the hospital, it was wonderful for sure.”

Bill Sanders, a 40-year EMT veteran and tour chief, said the call was as smooth as they come.

"It couldn’t have gone any better — it was just so perfect," Sanders said. “Everybody worked as a team. We didn’t have to talk among ourselves about who’s doing what. We took control of the whole situation and everything was smooth."

Sanders said EMTs train regularly for birth scenarios and practice them annually during recertifications. “It was more about getting the mother comfortable into a position for her to deliver safely,” he said.

Both Thair and Wargelin, who are in clinical rotations — one in gynecology — got hands-on experience that morning.

“The delivery was picture perfect,” Sanders said. “Everybody was calm, there was no urgency. Brianna, when she delivered the baby, did as she was taught in school — and within seconds the baby started crying. Everyone was excited for the mother and father."