Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 27, 1994 TAG: 9411280070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As a Thanksgiving treat for his 3-year-old sister, Matthew's parents boarded TWA Flight 265 Wednesday, bound for Orlando, Fla., and Disney World. The L-1011, packed with 213 passengers, left John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York about 8:30 a.m.
Theresa de Bara, nearly seven months pregnant, had woken up that morning with a pain she first thought was indigestion. She'd called her doctor as a precaution, and he'd assured her that it probably was false labor and that it was OK to make the trip. The same thing had happened before daughter Amanda was born.
As the plane climbed to its cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, the pain intensified. Seated next to her toward the rear of the plane was her husband, Santiago, whom friends call Sandy.
``The pain just got worse. She was holding onto my hand and sticking her nails into me,'' Sandy de Bara said Saturday at Reston (Va.) Hospital Center, where Matthew, aided by a ventilator, is in critical but stable condition.
As breakfast was being served, about a half-hour into the flight, the de Baras told a flight attendant they needed help. Theresa was bent over in pain, and contractions had started.
Steven M. Rachlin was sitting with his wife, Jeanne, and three daughters when a flight attendant got on the public address system and asked for a doctor. Rachlin, a Long Island internist who specializes in nutrition, once delivered a baby - 13 years ago.
``Tuesday had been a long day, and I got very little sleep that night,'' Rachlin, 46, said Friday night from an Orlando hotel. ``Here I was on a vacation to relax, and then I was on an airplane being asked to deliver a baby. I was in an altered state.''
Stretched out across the five seats in Row 28, Theresa de Bara held her hand out for the doctor to grasp in comfort. He, too, thought that her pains were false labor and that the plane could make it to Florida. But the contractions grew more frequent, and it appeared she was starting to hemorrhage.
``The plane has to come down,'' Rachlin told the startled crew. Capt. Gerald McFerrin radioed controllers at the closest major airfield, Dulles International Airport, that he was going to make an emergency landing. That's when most passengers on Flight 265 learned that they'd witness a midair miracle.
``I want every arm, elbow and foot out of the aisle!'' ordered Connie Duquette, a flight attendant for 22 years. The crew began running linens between first class and Theresa's airborne bed.
Suddenly, Theresa de Bara screamed. Holding his wife's legs, Sandy could see the top of his son's head. ``I felt helpless,'' he said. ``I couldn't do anything. We had worked so hard for this baby. I didn't want it to end like this.''
``It's here,'' the doctor announced tensely. The cabin was eerily silent. Rachlin told Theresa de Bara to take deep breaths and push. Out came the baby, the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. The time was about 9:40 a.m. The plane was 90 miles from Dulles, beginning its descent.
Yet that was too far. The child wasn't breathing and was turning blue. A couple who had been sitting several rows away rushed over and identified themselves as Jim and Jen Midgely, paramedics from Newburyport, Mass. They had delivered about a dozen babies, and Jen Midgely said her specialty was ``infant respiratory procedure.''
She needed a straw to suction the fluid from the baby's lungs, but no straws were on board. Then a flight attendant remembered she had a juice box with a tiny, bendable straw. Jen Midgely gently pushed it down the infant's throat while Rachlin administered CPR. Finally, both could see the child begin to breathe on his own.
Something was needed to tie off the umbilical cord. Duquette looked down and saw a pair of dirty sneakers. The flight attendant hesitated for a moment. ``Then I saw a man wearing new shoes, and I said, `Sir, I need your shoelace,''' she said. ``He whipped that shoelace off so fast. He got off in Orlando wearing a shoe without a lace.''
As the plane landed and taxied down the runway, Duquette got on the public address system: ``It's a boy.''
The whole cabin erupted in cheers and applause. Amanda de Bara, who had been passed among her father and several sympathetic passengers, declared, ``Now I know where babies come from.'' The flight attendants were crying. Finally, so was the baby.
Dulles Airport paramedics Eugene Hunley and Scott Chamberlin arrived at the terminal gate shortly after 10. Hunley carried the newborn, wrapped in navy airline blankets, off the plane. Theresa de Bara, whose blood pressure had plunged, was hooked up to intravenous fluids before Chamberlin accompanied her off the plane 20 minutes later - as passengers gave her and Rachlin an emotional standing ovation.
by CNB